B.A. (Hons.

) English Semester-II

Core Course
Paper-IV
British Poetry and Drama : 14th to 17th Centuries
Study Material : SM 1 (Unit 1-2)

SCHOOL OF OPEN LEARNING

UNIVERSITY OF DELHI

Department of English
 Paper-IV : British Poetry and Drama: 14th to 17th Centuries
Study Material : SM 1 (Unit 1-2)

Contents
Unit-1 : Geoffrey Chaucer General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales 01

Unit-2 : 133
(a) Thomas Wyatt (i) ‘Whoso List to Hunt’
(ii) ‘They Flee from Me’
(b) Edmund Spenser (i) Sonnet LVII ‘Sweet Warrior’
(ii) Sonnet LXXV ‘One day I wrote her name’
(both from ‘Amoretti’)
(c) Isabella Whitney ‘I.W. To Her Unconstant Lover’
(d) John Donne (i) The Sunne Rising;
(ii) A Valediction; Forbidden Mourning

SCHOOL OF OPEN LEARNING

UNIVERSITY OF DELHI
5, Cavalry Lane, Delhi-110007
Paper-IV : British Poetry and Drama: 14th to 17th Centuries
Unit-1
Geoffrey Chaucer : General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales

Table of Contents

Preface

1. Chaucer’s England

2. Chaucer's Life and Works

3. Introduction to the General Prologue

4. Textual Analysis

4. 1 : The Beginning

4.2 : The Pilgrims

4. 3 : The Conclusion

Appendices

Appendix I Some Examination Questions

Appendix II Suggestions for Further Reading

Prepared by:
Dr. Neeta Gupta

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 Preface

Chaucer (1343-1400) is one of the earliest known great poets to write in English. Best known
for his lengthy work The Canterbury Tales, he is often referred to as the ‘Father of English
literature.’ Writing in Middle English, Chaucer makes liberal use of Latin and French words
too. You may come across many words that are no longer in use in the English language as
we know it todaysuch as the word ‘ful’ usedby Chaucer’s means ‘very’ in modern English.
You will find that even the spellings of words differs in Chaucer. Medieval English or
Chaucer’s English, is surely a little difficult to understand at a first glance, yet it does not take
away from the delight and pleasure that Chaucer’s poetry has to offer and especially so The
Canterbury Tales.
From The Canterbury Tales you have The General Prologue in course this year. You are
required to read the text in original. To make the task of reading Chaucer a bit easier it would
be advisable to use a good annotated edition of the prescribed text.If however, you still feel
the need to read a translated version of the same, the best choice would be Nevill Coghill’s
translation of The Canterbury Tales, published by Penguin Books.
The General Prologueis an introduction to Chaucer’s very long narrative poem The
Canterbury Tales. Here Chaucer introduces us to each of the twenty nine pilgrims who have
gathered together at an inn in Southwark to set off on a pilgrimage to Canterbury the next
morning. Chaucer himself joins themand becomes the thirtieth pilgrim in the group. The
pilgrims are drawn from all walks of life and it has been observed that in the General
Prologue Chaucer gives us almost a cross section of the fourteenth century society. The
pilgrim Chaucer takes upon himself the job of describing each and every pilgrim in the group.
What was society like in Chaucer’s times? What were the various professions that people
engaged in?What were the socio- economic conditions? Did religion and the Church play a
significant role in people’s lives? In the analysis of the General Prologuethese are just some
of the issues thatare discussed and explained in this Study Material. The first Sectionof this
material acquaints you with Chaucer’s socio-historical background. The second provides
information regarding a few biographical details andtells you about Chaucer’s varied literary
output. Next follows a detailed introduction to the General Prologuethatacquaints you with
theimportant aspects of the same.The last section is acomprehensivetextual analysis of the
prescribed text.
Appendix I of this Study Material lists some examination questions and Appendix IIgives
you ‘Suggestions for Further Reading’on Chaucer. The samealso contains a list of the
available annotated editions of The General Prologue any one of which can be used for your
study of the text. For your ease however, a glossary along with explanatory notes has been
provided in the textual analysis of the Prologue in this material. A few essays from the list of
suggested reading have been made available to you separately as Reading Material.
Dr. Neeta Gupta

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1. Chaucer’s England
You may take one look at Chaucer’s poetry and wonder why you are expected to read it? Not
only is the English archaic and therefore almost beyond easy comprehension, but you may
even think why read a poet at all who lived and wrote almost six centuries ago? What can we
have in common with a man from the fourteenth-century? Granted that he was one of the first
great poets of the English language, but is that reason enough to worry our heads over the
antiquated spellings and the difficult vocabulary that mark Chaucer’s poetry? Poetry, which
should be a pleasant and leisurely reading, is here made laborious and difficult when
accompanied by the constant activity of reading footnotes and referring to the glossary to
search for meanings. This exercise may be laborious and tedious but it is precisely one of the
very important reasons for reading Chaucer as it enables us to see how the English language
developed. There is no end to the delight that Chaucer’s poetry brings once we get used to his
language. In The Canterbury Tales, especially so The General Prologue, he never ceases to
amaze with his endless variety, his humour, his deft use of the couplet, his richly creative
picture of fourteenth century England and his in-depth understanding of human nature...
As a result of the Norman Conquest, French became the language of law and
administration in thirteenth century. English gradually lost its hold and prestige. Of course it
was still the spoken language but was less used for educational purposes. Gradually it lost
even the standard spellings that had evolved in the late Anglo-Saxon times. It came to be
written more phonetically, according to the local dialects. To this English Chaucer grafted
many French words and a few words of Latin and Italian too. His English comes close to
Modern English, which begins taking shape around the sixteenth century. But Chaucer takes
the credit for being one of the first earliest known and great poets to write in English instead
of French and Latin which were supposed to be the language of the literates. Chaucer’s
contribution to the English language therefore becomes one of the most important reasons for
reading his poetry.
Once you do get down to reading Chaucer, and especially The General Prologue which
is prescribed in your course, you will realize that though not easy it is also not very difficult.
As you read on another fact that emerges is the surprising extent to which you will be able to
identify with the satirical spirit of the work. Chaucer may be writing of medieval personages,
but the kind of things he criticizes, be it human behaviour or corruption in places high and
low, position of women or the increasing materialistic attitude, they seem to be all too
familiar. In fact, the strains of feminism that you will see in the Wife’s character will amaze
you because of its modern relevance. Chaucer sure was one poet who could look very far
ahead of his times to give us one of the earliest feminists. So early in fact that feminism as a
movement was still many years away. This is true of the General Prologue as well, which is
a collection of pen portraits. In these portraits you will find that the atmosphere being
reflected is something close to what it is in our present century. The same kind of questioning

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spirit, skepticism, loss of faith, increase in corruption, greed for material goods, desire for
upward mobility, can be seen in Chaucer’s portraits. By now you must be curious to know
more about an age which is so far back, yet so similar to our own. Moreover, for the purpose
of analyzing Chaucer’s poetry, it is the next logical step. We all know that the literature of a
period reflects that particular age and if the work under consideration is a satire, as Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales is, it becomes all the more necessary for us to find out more about the Age
which is being thus exposed and satirized.

1.1. The Middle Ages and ‘Change’

The one word that describes the Middle Ages is ‘change’. It was a change from the old to the
new, from medieval to modern, from feudalism to capitalism, from town to city, from a king
by Divine right to a king who proves himself most able. There were many developments
taking place; aristocracy was on the decline, the increase in trade had given rise to
capitalism, which made for greater social mobility of the classes. Serfdom was being
abolished. The spread of schooling had increased the number of literate people, and men
now being able to read the Bible on their own, had begun to question the Church. In fact it
was an age of rapid transitions, of achievements as well as disasters.

1.2. The Political Front

On the, political front, England’s victories began at Crecy, when the English routed the
French in the Year 1346. This was followed immediately by the crushing defeat of the Scotch
at Neville’s Cross and the tempo was kept up when after another ten years, on Sept. 19, 1356,
the Black Prince won another brilliant, victory over the French near Poitiers.
These were the years of amazing good fortune for England. It reigned supreme on land as
well as sea and the proud Englishman was exposed to the new feelings of nationalism and
patriotism. But it was too good to last and too difficult to maintain. The downfall began in
the year 1367 when England went to war with Spain. Though the Black Prince won the battle
at Najera, yet the victory was fruitless and the war with Spain dragged on for many years
incurring heavy losses. By the year 1385, there was such a reversal in the military situation
that the threat of the French invasion made the Englishman tremble with fear.

1.3. The Setbacks

While on the one hand the picture of ‘Merry England’ is associated with Medieval England,
with happiness and prosperity all around, on the other hand it was one of the most strife-torn
times in the history of the country. Not only were there political setbacks, there were ravages
of Nature too in the form of disease and pestilence and the most dreaded of them all the
Plague or the Black Death as it is commonly referred to, struck England in the year 1348.
Beginning in Dorchester it spread rapidly from one town to another, claiming innumerable
lives as it went. As though the loss of lives in the first visitation of this appalling calamity
was not enough, it returned to strike three times in the course of the century and swept with it
nearly half the population of England.

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1.4. The Labour Class
At first prices fell sharply because people had forgotten to set much store by material goods.
But gradually, the pendulum swung to the other extreme and money once again recovered the
purchasing power it had in the former years. The rising prices made the gulf between the rich
and the poor, even more wide and the worst sufferers were the laborers whose wages, had not
been increased at all and were now not enough even to help them survive. After the year of
the Black Death, the labour class began demanding higher wages, and since there was
shortage of hands due to the heavy loss of life in the plague, these labourers got what they
demanded. It was with a mind to curb the unreasonable demands of these labourers, that in
the year 1349, the king issued a proclamation, forbidding the payment of a higher wages than
had been given before. The next Parliament passed the famous Statute of Labourers. Though
this statute attempted to fix the wages of the labourers as well as the prices of essential
commodities, yet the cunning tradesmen thwarted the latter aim. The labourers sought for
ways and means to improve their lot. They disregarded their allegiance to their lord or manor
and moved from place to place in search of better wages. Thieving and robbing were on the
increase. Discontent grew and spread fast culminating in the famous uprising of 1381, also
known as the Peasant’s Revolt.
Trade unionism and the labour movements of the later years were foreshadowed in this
uprising. For three days England had a bitter taste of the fury of the discontented masses.
Many people were massacred. The poor peasants, being denied even the minimum
sustenance, attacked the house of the rich in a fit of rage. John of Gaunt’s palace was raised
to the ground. The king made a show of promise of granting them pardon but once the rebels
had returned back home he revoked his orders and there followed widespread execution of
the rebels all over England. Chaucer’s Ploughman in The General Prologue is indeed an ideal
and not factual portrait of a member of the labouring class.

1.5. The Rising Middle Class

While we see such abject poverty on the one hand, on the other there was a sudden influx of
wealth due to growing trade and commerce and also due to the plundering brought from the
various wars that England won. People apart from the aristocracy or landed gentry, were now
becoming rich. The feudal set-up was breaking up thus leading to fluidity in classes and a
greater social mobility. Now it was not necessary that a serf would remain a serf. Trade had
brought with it the promise of wealth and the corresponding rise in capitalism gave rise to
new standards of living. Chaucer, too, in The General Prologue has included various people
to represent these rising merchant classes – there is the Shipman, the Five Guildsmen, the
Wife of Bath, the Manciple, and the Merchant and so on. But one interesting fact about these
people is that they seem to be indulging in a lot of extravagances. As far as the Five
Guildsmen are concerned, Chaucer is careful to point out that they are dressed above their
station having even their knives tipped with silver thus drawing our attention to a very
interesting development of the times. Extravagance in the area of dress and of food had

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grown to disgusting limits. In fact the literature of the times is full of humorous and satirical
descriptions of the clothes people wore and the food they ate. To control this situation the
Parliament had issued an ordinance regulating the kind of clothing for all ranks in society and
also for regulating the diets of certain classes in society. Of course one need not add that the
system did not work and so we find Chaucer’s Guildsmen flourishing their silver tipped
knives quite brazenly.

1.6. The Ecclesiasts and the Church

Society in Chaucer’s times was becoming increasingly materialistic and people did not fail to
use dishonest means. The Reeve and Manciple are just two of the many examples from
Chaucer’s gallery who can illustrate this point. But dishonesty and corruption at the level of
the Church had become so rampant that frequently the satirist aimed to bark at this institution
of fourteenth century England. Even Chaucer is most critical of the ecclesiastical characters
among his pilgrims, and not without reasons. The churchmen who preached a spirit of
sacrifice had become greedy and self-seeking. Those who were to be the epitome of
discipline, sharing and teaching others to have respect for authority were now themselves
showing a complete disregard and contempt of authority. The begging Friars were able to
extort money even from the needy; the wicked pardoner cheated the people by selling
fraudulent relics (just as Chaucer’s Pardoner does). The Monks were harsh landlords and the
parish priests were shirkers of duty. Chaucer’s poor Parson is an idealized portrait just as the
Ploughman was earlier.

1.7. Spread of Literacy

Apart from the rise in commerce there was a rapid growth in another direction as well.
Literacy was on the rise with a rapid spread of schooling, and it was no longer the privilege
of the clerics or clergy only. In the latter half of the fourteenth century, literate laymen were
abundant in number. But the shortage of books was keenly felt since printing was not
possible. The printing press, which was in a sense, the greatest invention of the age, was still
many years away. For the time being, books were circulated in manuscript form and copies
were made by hand. It was a tedious and laborious process where scribes were especially
employed for the purpose. Often they made mistakes and if a copy was made from a copy,
these mistakes were carried further. At times a mistake even if noticed, was not corrected
because it would mean spoiling the looks of a whole page. Thus an untidy manuscript was far
more reliable than one which was absolutely clean and beautiful. This process of copying
books by hand thus led to variations in each copy, and today, if we try to reconstruct say
Chaucer’s TheCanterbury Tales, it would mean taking about eighty manuscripts into account.
We can understand therefore, why books were such priceless possessions in Chaucer’s
England and were even bequeathed in wills. While on the subject of Education it is worth
mentioning, the two very important contributions that fourteenth century England made in
this direction. The new college system was introduced for the first time in England and the

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Inns of Court for the study of law were opened where Chaucer is supposed to have studied
for a few years.
In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer puts before us a picture of a society in which medieval
ideals were breaking down and as Dudley French writes these ideals “had become so old
fashioned that only a few quixotic persons any longer allowed them to interfere with their
materialistic purposes.” Excitement and apprehension about the coming age, and nostalgia for
the passing values are both mingled in The Canterbury Tales to make it a true picture of
fourteenth century England.

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2. Chaucer’s Life and Works
‘Perhaps’ and ‘probably’, are two words which would accompany any account of Chaucer’s
life because there is a considerable amount of conjecture involved in filling up the gaps
between the surviving records which form the concrete evidence. One of the earliest such
records, where Chaucer’s name first appears, has survived just by a matter of chance, in a
couple of papers used for binding up another book. These leaves, when discovered in 1851
after oblivion of nearly five centuries, were found to contain scraps of accounts about various
people being given ribbons and robes worth a certain amount. The records belong to the
household of Elizabeth, Countess of Ulster, wife of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, who was the
third son of King Edward III. It is here that Chaucer is mentioned for the first time when it is
noted in the accounts that ‘Galfridus’ (Latin for Geoffrey) Chaucer, was given on Monday 4
April, 1357, a ‘paltok’ or short cloak, costing four shillings, plus a pair of red and black
breeches and a pair of shoes which cost his lady a further three shillings. Chaucer was
probably a page in the household and was being given his bright new clothes for Easter,
which fell on 9 April that year. By this time he was probably seventeen years old or near
about that since his birth is conjectured to be somewhere near 1340.
2.1. Early Years
Though born and bred in London, Geoffrey Chaucer belonged to a family of wine merchants
who can be traced to the town of Ipswich. It is thought that the family was of French origin
because of their name Chaucer which in French ‘Chaucier’ means ‘hose-makers.’ They were,
however, vintners having property in and around London. Both Chaucer’s father and his
grandfather are known to have served the King at various times performing the duty of
collecting the King’s customs.
Not much is known about the poet’s grandfather Robert Chaucer, except that he was a
vintner, owned property in Ipswich, was deputy to the King’s chief butler in 1308 and 1310
and married a widow Mary, from the affluent family of the Westhales. They had a son John,
born in 1313. He carried on the family business of a vintner and inherited the entire property.
It was with a desire to acquire this property that John Chaucer’s aunt i.e. Robert’s sister,
made an attempt to abduct him in order to marry him off to her daughter Joan. The attempt
was foiled and the abductors were sued at Law. It is in the records of this case that we find
John Chaucer being mentioned at an early age. John later married a wealthy widow, a certain
Agnes, who brought with her more property and the family prospered further. It is probably
in their house on Thames Street, that Geoffrey Chaucer was born to them, perhaps in the year
1340.
No record survives of the poet’s early years and we can only conjecture about how and
when Chaucer received the education that fitted him for his career as a courtier and a poet.

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The first concrete evidence shows him to be already employed as a page in the household of
the Countess of Ulster. Chaucer’s life as a page would have taught him many things. The
polite manners and elaborate etiquette of the gentlefolk would have been observed and
learned by him while waiting at the table. Keeping his eyes and ears open he probably picked
up many scandalous and comic stories as well. His interest in music can be traced back to
these years, but being a literate he, while listening to the songs and romances, also read them
for himself, both in English and French. His remarkable memory for the poems of the
continental French poet Machaut, evidences in TheBook of the Duchess. It was here that he
was given instruction in military training. His life as a page offered him ample opportunity to
observe human behavior minutely and probably just like the pilgrim Chaucer in The
Canterbury Tales, he went about his job quite unobtrusively.
2.2. Professional Life
Subsequent records show Chaucer serving three different Kings in non-poetic capacity. The
amount of tact, diplomacy and adaptability required to have equally good relations with three
different monarchs, is anybody’s guess and we can form a rough estimate of the kind of
person Chaucer might have been to have succeeded in this difficult job. Records show that he
accompanied King Edward on his invasion of France; was a diplomat to the continent trying
to establish peaceful relations between France and England; went to Italy in 1372 - a journey
which was to influence his literary career; was appointed comptroller of customs in 1374, and
was legal guardian to young Edmund Staplegate of Kent and to the heir of the late John
Solys. He probably even went to France to negotiate a marriage between the French Princess
and Richard II, but was not successful. Chaucer’s own marriage was however, with a certain
Phillipa Roet. His marriage was another step towards a further advancement in court because
Philippa was in direct attendance to the Queen as one of her ‘domicellae.’ She was the
daughter of Sir Payne Roet, a knight of Hainaut and King of Arms of Guienne in the reign of
Edward III.
Having served as comptroller of customs, Chaucer was appointed one of the Justices of
Peace for Kent on October 12, 1385 and in 1386 he was elected Knight of the Shire for Kent.
It is around this time that we find Chaucer engaged in hectic literary activity since the three
of his greatest works have been dated to this period of his life. Troilus and Criseyde was
written between 1382 and 1385; the Legend of Good Women probably in 1385 or 1386 and
The Canterbury Tales was begun around 1387. It is quite likely that he voluntarily resigned
from his duties as a comptroller of customs to devote more time to his writing, for records
show that around this time he vacated his office as well as the house over Aldgate. He took
up residence in the country. During the latter part of the year 1387, Chaucer’s wife passed
away, but the poet did not marry again. His leisure was however encroached upon once again
when on July 12, 1389 he was appointed clerk of the King’s works. This job though
remunerative, involved a lot of personal attention and claimed much of Chaucer’s time and
energy. He held the post for two years and since it involved a great amount of risk to life, he
relinquished his job on June 17, 1391. The new position he now took up was as sub-forester
of the King’s park in Somersetshire.
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 Around this time however, Chaucer’s good fortune seemed to be ebbing slowly. There
are records to prove that he borrowed small sums of money and in April 1398, a certain
Isabella Buckholt sued him for a debt of £14. But the evidence is not adequate enough to
prove that in the last decade of his life Chaucer was in serious financial difficulties. Moreover
his favour at court was strong enough to have any of his petitions granted to him. In October
of the year 1398, his petition for a daily butt of wine was granted immediately by King
Richard. This was however, the last of Richard’s gifts to his ‘beloved esquire’ for in 1399,
Henry IV usurped his throne. Chaucer received favours from this new King as well. In
December 1399, Chaucer made another change of residence to Westminster Abbey and died
in this house on October 25, 1400. He was buried at Westminster Abbey.
2.3. Literary Career
Chaucer began his literary career by translating Roman de la Rose, a French composition
begun by Guillaume de Lorris and completed by Jean Clopinel. By translating a French work,
Chaucer was only following the prevalent fashion but his next work which was an elegy on
the death of Queen Blanche, the wife of John of Gaunt, was his own composition. T’he Book
of the Duchess was accompanied by three other short poems Pity, Complaint to his Lady, and
A.B.C. All these poems were modeled on French ideals of poetry. In the next group of poems
we find Chaucer branching off into narrative verse for the first time. Life of S. Cecilia and
Stories of Griselda and Constance show an increasing confidence in the language and also
certain touches of humor which were later to form an integral part of Chaucer’s poetry.
Twelve Tragedies and TheComplaint of Mars intervene between the writing of his
second great work i.e. Troilus and Cressida. Meanwhile he translated De Consolation
Philosophiae of Boethius. Subsequently The House of Fame and The Parliament of Fowles
followed. Both of these were marriage poems written with a characteristic touch of
Chaucerian irony and humour. His next ambitious attempt was The Legend of Good Women,
but the tale of Palamon and Arcite is alluded to in the prologue to the Legend and is perhaps
one of Chaucer’s finest works. The Legend of Good Women was abandoned after he had
written nine of the nineteen tales planned. The idea of having a number of tales linked by
some device had already taken shape in Chaucer’s mind. The Canterbury Tales though left
unfinished, were a successful rendering of this same idea. This was his last important work
and its writing spread over many years. Chaucer wrote a few other short poems apart from
these - The Former Age, Fortune, Truth, Gentilesse, Lak of Stedfastnessare minor poems.
Then there are the three ballads which are usually called The Complaint of Venus, the Envoy
to Scogan, the Envoy to Buktonand theCompleynt of Chaucer to his Purse which was most
certainly his last work, complete the long list of his literary achievement.
The Canterbury Tales is undoubtedly Chaucer’s most well-known and often read work.
With the General Prologue in part and with The Canterbury Tales on the whole, Chaucer
ushered into the world of poetry, new subjects and new methods of treatment. This was
perhaps his greatest achievement because when he began to write, the adventures and
romances of the knights and ladies had begun to lose their charm. Chaucer drew upon reality,

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upon people he met daily and who were familiar figures to everyone because they were
English people and not figures drawn from French, Italian or Latin literature. Not only were
the subjects new, Chaucer’s method of treating them was new as well. He introduced the
conversational tone into English poetry. His easy flowing metre succeeded in removing the
monotony and complications that were there earlier in the octosyllabic couplets and long
involved stanzas. Chaucer’s seven-line stanza and ten or eleven syllabled couplets were
refreshing. His gentle humour and seemingly serious but jesting manner makes Chaucer a
delight to read. As a teller of tales and as a painter of pen portraits Chaucer remains
unsurpassed even today.
2.4. His Poetic Vision
In this prolific poetic career Chaucer’s poetic vision took shape gradually and as it grew it
become more detailed, sharp and realistic by the time he came to write The Canterbury Tales.
As Nevill Coghill writes:
He began to notice – but always with apparent good humour – the many self-
contradictions between a man’s profession and his behaviour; he became aware – one
might almost say delightedly ironically aware – of certain blackguardism in humanity.
Certainly there were some blackguards … but it would seem that for all his awareness
of their wickedness he had no real fear they would corrupt the world. They would
meet their reward in due course, and he had a fair comic idea of the kind of hell in
which some of them would meet it.
This, I think, underlies the cheerfulness of Chaucer’s poetical vision of the world; he
does not deny the evil in it, on the contrary he singles it out, often enough, and with
acuity and relish; but the general good health of society and the general agreement as
to the purpose of life, seen with lightest allegory as a pilgrimage, seems to have led
him to think that the evils he saw about him could be contained, as the pilgrimage
moved along, without too much trouble; he did not share the view of his great
contemporary, the author of Piers Plowman, that the Day of Anti Christ was upon
them.
(From Nevill Coghill: Introduction to A Choice of Chaucer’s Verse, Faber and Faber,
London, 1972).
In The Canterbury Tales the readers are constantly subjected to a kind of double vision,
which by implication puts things in correct perspective. The attitude of the poet, however,
continues to have a tolerance for all human frailties, therefore the satire never ever borders on
the invective and the world remains light-hearted.
Because of Chaucer’s cheerfully hopeful poetical vision, coupled with frequent touches of
humor and irony, The Canterbury Tales make for an interesting and delightful reading despite
laying bare the corruption rampant in fourteenth century England and exposing the rogues
who thronged its streets.

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3. An Introduction to the General Prologue
The plan of The Canterbury Tales might have been conceived earlier but was adopted around
the year 1386 and the General Prologue was probably written in the year 1387. Some of the
Tales have been dated till the year 1394 but not later than that and the work as it stands today
is still incomplete. Already while writing The Legend of Good Women we see Chaucer trying
to link up a number of stories together. But the theme of The Legend was however too
monotonous for the liking of a man whose distinctive, genius was for variety. It is not
surprising therefore that the moment the idea of a pilgrimage, lent itself to Chaucer’s
imagination to act as a linking device for a collection of a variety of stories, he promptly laid
aside the writing of The Legend and plunged straight ahead into The Canterbury Tales.

3.1. The Framework Device

The device of a pilgrimage to link up a collection of tales is part of a general tradition of
frame story or a series of tales enclosed within a narrative. The idea had been used by many
writers all over the world and perhaps the earliest example one can find is in the tales of the
Panchtantrafrom India. There were several such tales in circulation for example the Spanish
Conde Lucanor of the Infante Juan Manuel, the Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio to which
Chaucer’s own idea of a pilgrimage is often traced and then Italian Novelle of Giovanni
Sercambi, which shows an even greater similarity to The Canterbury Tales. There is no
concrete evidence which proves that Chaucer possessed any of the above mentioned works or
used them at all for his stories. On the other hand there is no reason that prevents us from
believing that the idea might have come to him as an entirely original one. The sight of
pilgrims, travelling along the road to Canterbury, making merry as they went, often
accompanied by sounds of bagpipes, must have been a familiar sight to him. Perhaps, as he
looked at these merry companies the idea might have come to him to link together his
scattered stories. As Pollard says, in this idea he also found ‘a peg on which to hang fresh
ones by depicting a company of such English travellers and assigning to them such tales as
would best suit their characters and professions or raise a laugh by their incongruity.’ (Alfred
W. Pollard, ‘General Introduction’ to Chaucer’s Prologue, Macmillan & Co. Ltd., London,
1962).

3.2. The Pilgrimage as a Framework Device

The occasion for the Tales is a pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas a Becket who had been
murdered on Dec. 29. 1170, and canonized three years later and had by Chaucer’s time,
become almost the national saint. The shrine, to which his body was transferred in 1220, was
a venerated spot and visited by pilgrims from all walks of life. The popularity of this
pilgrimage had still not waned by Chaucer’s time and so we find it becoming an apt subject
for his collection of tales. A definite point in time is chosen. The month of April to be exact
and the narrative is in first person lending credence to the idea that Chaucer himself had
participated in just such a pilgrimage. To pass their time on the way to Canterbury it is
14
decided that each pilgrim (there are thirty in all) will tell two tales, while going to and two
while coming from the shrine at Canterbury. If everything had gone according to plan, and if
the work had been complete there would have been one hundred and twenty tales in all.

3.3. A Cross-section of Society

We have seen how the device of the pilgrimage to link up a collection of tales is part of a
general tradition of a frame story, or a series of tales enclosed within a narrative. But
Canterbury Talesis different than most of the classical or medieval examples we can find,
because here the framework does not remain merely a mechanical device to link the stories.
In fact, it is a means of maintaining smooth flow of action and also of keeping a certain group
of people engaged quite naturally in a certain form of entertainment. This ingenious device of
the pilgrimage not only creates a happy occasion but also an opportunity for bringing together
all sorts of people from various areas of life. Though the group of thirty pilgrims is not
schematically representative of English society, yet it covers well enough the main social
classes. Only the very rich or the very poor are excluded from the group, otherwise we have a
whole gamut of characters. There is a Knight, a Squire and a Yeoman who reflect on the
changes in the feudal set-up. The Monk, the Friar and the Prioress are used to expose the
corruption in the regular order of the Church. The five Guildsmen i.e. the haberdasher, the
carpenter, the weaver, the dyer and the tapestry maker, accompanied by their Cook and
dressed in clothes above their station, flaunting their riches, represent the growing industry
and the rising middle-class of Chaucer’s England. The daring Shipman brings in the sea,
which had opened immense possibilities for trade; the Physician brings in the state of
medieval medicine. The Wife of Bath who is a cloth merchant, is once again representative of
the expanding trade of the fourteenth century as well as becomes a vehicle for information on
the position of women in fourteenth century England. The portraits of the clergy (which form
nearly one third of the company) are significant for the tolerance with which Chaucer points
out the foibles of the monastic orders in describing the Monk and the Prioress. He is more
severe in describing the worldliness of the Friar and openly attacks the corrupt Summoner
and the Pardoner. His ideal portraits of the Clerk of Oxford, the Parson, the Knight and the
Ploughman, perhaps reflect his own admiration of the basic ideals of earlier medieval society,
during these times of changing standards.

3.4. The Pilgrim Chaucer

After a brief introduction, we meet Chaucer the pilgrim, as he lies at the Tabard inn at
Southwork, waiting to go on his pilgrimage to Canterbury the next morning. The nine and
twenty, ‘sondry folk’ who enter the inn at night are all discovered to be fellow pilgrims.
Chaucer having spoken to all of them during the course of a few hours decides to describe
them:
But nathless, while 1 have tyme and space
Er that 1 ferther in this tale pace

15
 Me thynketh it accordaunt to resoun
To telle you al the condicioun
Of each of hem, so it semed me.
And whiche they werne, and of What degree
And eek in what array that they were inne. (Lines: 35-41)

At the end of the portraits, Chaucer recalls his intention and declares that he has fulfilled it
Now have 1 toold you soothly, in a clause
The estaat, th’array, the number and eek the cause
Why that assembled was the company. (Lines: 715-17)
It is interesting to note however, that Chaucer does not keep to the rigid standards he lays
down for himself and as if realizing this, he apologizes in the end:
Also 1 prey you to forgive it me
AI have I not set folk in her degree
Heere in this tale, as that they should stande
My wit is short Ye may well understand. (Lines: 743-47).
Two things ought to be noted in the lines quoted above. First is Chaucer’s admission of not
having followed any set pattern of description, and second the reason he gives for having
done so-namely his wit being too short for such a purpose. To take the latter first, even at this
stage we can he careful not to take Chaucer at his word. The picture he presents of himself, as
Chaucer the pilgrim, is one of a self-effacing, naive and gullible observer who takes things at
face value and reports them as such. He seems to be a simpleton, who approves of whatever
he sees. Yet there is much lying beneath the surface of the portraits and the mask is peeled off
once we make a distinction between Chaucer the pilgrim and Chaucer the poet. The poet
Chaucer, who is a clever and shrewd observer, is responsible for the deft use of irony, the
tongue- in-cheek manner in which the pilgrims are described. For the irony to be more
effective and for the sarcasm to be more scathing, it was necessary that Chaucer create a
gullible persona for himself who could claim that his wit is short.

3.5. The Plan of The Canterbury Tales

At the outset, Chaucer had declared his intention of describing each pilgrim according to a
certain set plan. Had he kept to this plan, the General Prologue might have been a string of
drab, dull monotonous and repetitive portraits. As it happens however, Chaucer deviates
markedly and we find no two portraits being painted in same colours. Variety becomes the
guiding principle, not only in the different kinds of people described, but also because no two
characters are treated in the same way. No single method of’ presentation therefore becomes
dominant and we have portraits ranging from nine lines to sixty-two lines.

16
 This group of pilgrims decides to pass the time on their long journey to Canterbury by
telling tales. Each pilgrim is required to tell two tales while going to and two while coming
from Canterbury and the best tale will earn for the teller a meal at the expense of the rest of
the pilgrims. Pilgrimage and picnic thus go hand in hand for these pilgrims. The element of
‘pleye’ or ‘game’ forms an essential part of the tales. Had the initial plan been completed, we
would have had 120 tales in all. As the work stands however, we are left with twenty finished
stories, two unfinished ones and two interrupted ones. Not all the pilgrims get a chance to tell
their tales but even in its unfinished stage the work includes a vast variety of the art of story-
telling. Nearly every type of medieval narrative is included – the romance of chivalry, the
allegory, the courtly lay, the fabliau, the beast epic, the story about saint’s lives, the mock
sermon, and the ethical discourse.

3.6. The Opening Lines

The opening lines of the General Prologue celebrate the coming of spring. Though we may
feel that this beautiful picture of the April showers and new life all around has been described
so for the first time, Chaucer is in fact following a convention. The very phrases and images
used here, show a striking parallel to a passage from Guido delleColonnes' Historia
DestructionisTroiae. A translation of the same passage further enforces the point:
It was the season when the sun, hastening under the turning circle of the zodiac, had
now entered its course under the sign of the Ram, in which the equinox is celebrated,
when the days of the beginning of spring are equal in length to the nights; then when
the season begins to soothe eager mortals in its clear air, then when as the snows melt,
gendy blowing zephyrs wrinkle up the waters; then when fountains gush out into
slender jars; then when moistures breathing out from the earth's bosom are raised up
within trees and branches to their tops, wherefore seeds leap forth, crops grow, fields
become green brightened by flowers of various colours; then when trees put on
renewed foliage everywhere; then when the earth is decked with grass, and birds sing,
sounding like the cithara in the euphony of sweet harmony."
(From M. Bowden A Commentary of the General Prologue, Souvenir Press, London
1948)
The similarity between the passage quoted above and the opening lines of the General
Prologue, is amazing. The sun is in the Ram; the sweet zephyrs inspires the tender crops; the
new sap or the moisture rises in the trees and leaves infusing them with new warmth and life;
even the birds who sing in sweet harmony are mentioned. The repeated use of the word
'when' also seems to be similar in both passages. The difference however lies in the style and
the rhetoric. Let us now take a brief look at how Chaucer's description works:
Whan that April with his shouressoote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swichlicour

17
 Of which vertu engendered is the flour
WhanZephirus eek with his sweet breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tender croppes and the youngesonne
Hath in the Ram his halfecours Y - ronne,
And smalefowelesmakenmelodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open eye
So priketh hem nature in her corages,
Thannelongen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to sekenstraungestronds. (Lines: 1-13)
The actual expressions may be similar but what distinguishes Chaucer's passage from other
similar descriptions, is the easy flowing verse which seems deceptively artless and effortless.
The rhymes of the couplets, instead of constraining the plan of words lend meaning to
thought without making the reader feel the skill that has rendered them so. And the
concluding couplet establishes the rhetoric of the passage which has worked on a pattern of
cause and effect, that when certain phenomenon are observed in Nature then certain other
things take place as a consequence.
The emphasis of the passage is on the renewed life of spring. There is no hint of the
famous Chaucerian irony. It is a sheer exultation, on the part of the poet, in the rejuvenating,
vivifying power of Nature. At this point there is no indication that the poet is different from
the narrator. The images and symbols used in the passage, all point towards a life reborn from
deadness. The April showers have pierced the ground and reached the roots and leaves. The
cold dead winter is over and a regenerative power which stirs new life into everything, is felt
all around. The wind zephyrs from the south is sweet and the sun, as it begins its new course,
is young still. This physical regeneration of Nature, has a corresponding effect in man and
stirs in him a desire for a spiritual renewal as well-hence the pilgrimage.
It is amazing to note that the first eighteen lines of the General Prologue form a single
long sentence, barely making any concession to syntactical inversions or other such poetical
licences. The opening sentence of Paradise Lost has often been compared to the opening
sentence of the General Prologue. Both are equally confident, equally lengthy, equally
demonstrate the mastery of each poet on his craft yet with so much of difference, As Derek
Pearsall puts it. "The opening of Milton's poem is like the launching of a great ship down the
slipway, the opening of Chaucer's is like the imperceptible edging away from shore..." (Derek
Pearsall, The Canterbury Tales, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1985). In these eighteen
lines, Chaucer brings us a long way from a conventional description of spring-time renewal
of Nature to a spiritual renewal in man. At the end of the passage, Nature and super-nature
exist in harmony.

18
3.7. Characterization
John Drydenin his Preface to the Fables, observed about Chaucer’s characters in the
Canterbury Tales that ‘here is God’s plenty.’Here indeed is God’s plenty! We have almost all
social classes being represented here barring the nobility and the paupers. Both would be
unlikely members of such a group of pilgrims. The feudal class or the world of chivalry is
represented by the Knight, the Squire and the Yeoman; the Clergy is represented in the
regular orders as well as the lower orders; the rising middle class, the medical profession, the
law, the tradesman,are all represented here.
There is a moral grouping as well, so we have the ideal characters like the Knight, the
Parson the Ploughman and the Clerk who are virtuous and beyond reproach. Then we have
the lesser mortals with their follies and foibles like the Wife, the Squire or thePrioress and the
Franklin. In addition we have the avariciousMiller, the lawyer or the Doctor who loves gold
in special. We also have the vicious villains of the piece like the Summoner or the Pardoner
who seem to be beyond redemption. What is interesting is that these characters may be
representative of a class, a profession or a moral trait or lack of it but such is Chaucer’s art of
characterization that he individualizes each one of them.
At the outset, Chaucer had declared his intention of describing each pilgrim according to
a certain set plan. Had he kept to this plan, theGeneral Prologue might have been a string of
drab, dull, monotonous and repetitive portraits. As it happens however, Chaucer deviates
markedly, and we find no two portraits being painted in same colours. Variety becomes the
guiding principle, not only in the different kinds of people described, but also because no two
characters are created in the same way. No single method of presentation therefore becomes
dominant and we have portraits ranging from nine lines to sixty two lines. Let us begin by
briefly glancing at the list of portraits with the number of lines allowed to each:
Knight 36
Squire 22
Yeoman 17
Prioress 45
Monk 43
Friar 62
Merchant 15
Clerk 24
Lawyer 22
Franklin 30
Five Guildsmen 18
Cook 9

19
 Shipman 23
Doctor 24
Wife of Bath 32
Parson 52
Ploughman 13
Miller 22
Manciple 20
Reeve 36
Summoner 46
Pardoner 46

Beginning with a Knight who represents the landed gentry, coming down to the Ploughman
who belongs to the labouring class, Chaucer gives an impression of describing the pilgrims in
a descending social order. The men of profession and the men of trade and commerce come
in between. The ecclesiastical portraits are described along with the secular. Yet Chaucer
deviates from this ordering too when a group of five rogues is appended to this list These five
men, belonging to different walks of life, however have one thing in common. They are all
rogues of first order and are adept at cheating the gullible men and women they came across
in their respective areas of work.
Chaucer has presented his characters in groups and here too he does not follow any
systematic order. As Derek Pearsall observes:
The general impression of hierarchy and the traditional ordering of the estates is
further disturbed by the counter pointing against it of other kinds of grouping,
suggestive of the multiplicity of ways in which man as a social being can be viewed.
The Parson and the Ploghman are linked by brotherhood, of both blood and spirit, the
Knight, Squire and Yeoman by kinship and service; the five Guildsmen and their
Cook by service alone; the Prioress, Monk and Friar by religious profession; the Man
of Law and Franklin by common interest; the Summoner and the Pardoner by
something probably unspeakable
(Derek Pearsall, Canterbury Tales, p.58).
This absence of any set pattern in the ordering of the pilgrims is carried over into the
description of each one of them, when again Chaucer delightedly breaks all formal standards
laid down by the rhetoricians. Not only does the technique differ from one portrait to another,
even within a single portrait there is no ordering of detail. Chaucer describes a person as
though his eye is wandering over him. He might notice one detail here, one there. He might
by association be reminded of something and would proceed to tell us about it. The
descriptions are almost haphazard, and therefore refreshing and more effective. Thus Chaucer
brings in a breath of fresh air into the world of formal portrait-in-words which goes back to
20
classical Antiquity. Medieval rhetoricians such as Matthew of Vendome and Geoffrey of
Vinsauf wrote treatise on rhetoric in the thirteenth century and gave several models or
patterns, as it were, to be followed by the portrait painter. These patterns were so rigid and
followed so rigorously that almost nothing was left to the imagination of the reader.
If we approach the General Prologue with some knowledge about these set patterns, we
can at once note, and with pleasure, how Chaucer deliberately avoids using any systematic
methods of portraiture. His method is the absence of all method. His ordering of detail is
quite arbitrary. Sometimes he may begin by describing the dress of the person and so much is
implied that one can almost see the character through the kind of clothes he wears. For
example the Knight's portrait begins with a description of his dress and Chaucer tells us that
his ‘gipoun’ or tunic, still carries the marks of his armour and his horses are good. We may
think this is mere factual information yet if we read between the lines Chaucer has told us
much more about the Knight than it seems. The fact that his gipoun is still stained with marks
of his armour tells us that the Knight has just returned from one of the crusades and has
wasted no time to go on his pilgrimage. We also come to know that he is not bothered about
his external appearance and has therefore not cared to change. Chaucer has been careful about
this essential equipment. A lack of means is however not the cause for the Knight's poor
appearance, and lest we may think so, Chaucer is careful to point out that the he rides a good
horse.
At times the details of dress may come at the end of the portrait almost as an afterthought,
and the description may begin with a general comment on the character, for example:
A Monk ther was, a fair for the maistrie. (Line: 165).
A Frere ther was, a wantown and merye (Line: 208)
A Sergeant of the lawe, war and wys (Line: 309).
Sometimes, the portrait may begin with a detail that seemed most striking to the narrator,
such as:
A Good Wif was ther of Biside Bathe,
But she was som-del deef, and that was scathe. (Lines: 445-46)
There are times when the narrator is so impressed with the person he is describing that he
begins the portraiture in almost eulogistic terms:
With us there was a Doctour of Phisik;
In all this world ne was ther noon hymlik. (Lines: 411-1)
The readers have to be watchful however, because this good impression may not be
consistent and the rest of the portrait may prove that the statement was made ironically. On
the other hand, the portrait may be consistently good as in the case of the Parson, devoid of
any irony whatsoever:
A good man was ther of religioun,

21
 And was a PourePersoun of a Toun;
Butrichie he was of hoolythoght and work;
He was also a lerned man, a clerk.(Lines: 477-80)
At other times, absolutely unrelated detail may be juxtaposed as for example in the case of
the Cook:
But greet harm was it, as it thoughte me,
That on his shyne a mormalhadde he.
For blackmange, that made he with the beste.(Lines: 385-7)
Chaucer merely observes and leaves it to us to make the connections.The implications of
having a ‘mormal’ or a running sore would have been very obvious to Chaucer’s readers.
Thus, while the narrator has merely observed and reported it is the poet who insinuates in the
detail that the he Cook is a man given to overindulgence in drink and sex.
Thus we see that no two portraits are alike, there is no overtly discernible pattern in any
one of them. What might have been a series of monotonous, repetitive descriptions tun out to
be a gallery of vivid characters which come alive because of the distinctive genius of
Chaucer. Each of the pilgrims who is described is revealed in such sharp and clear details that
we feel personally acquainted with him or her as an individual. At the same time we
recognize him as a representative not only of a social class but of a type of character that may
be recognized in any country and in any age. This accounts for the perennial appeal of the
General Prologue. Within the space allotted to each character, not a word is wasted, details
of physical appearance, dress and equipment, social rank and moral character evoke the
whole man or woman by powerful suggestive strokes. The haphazard manner of giving these
details is deliberately planned to produce the effect of spontaneity that creates a sense of
intimate acquaintance with each pilgrim.
Often readers have wondered whether Chaucer was describing real, actual people in
these portraits? Was there a Tabard Inn at Southwark in Chaucer's day? Was it owned by a
certain Harry Bailly, as the host in the Prologue is named? Was there such a Shipman, Friar,
Franklin and the rest. Was there a real Wife of Bath 'byg in armes'? The questions are endless
and various critics have tried to make connections between fact and fiction. A very
interesting study by Prof. J.M. Manly, entitled Some New Light on Chaucer. (New York:
Henry Holt & Co., 1926), deals extensively with this aspect of the Canterbury Tales.
Yet this desire to find real-life equivalents for Chaucer's pilgrims emphasizes the realistic
nature of the portraits. Chaucer might have borrowed ideas from his observations of real
people but to think that he actually modelled his pilgrims on real flesh and blood figures,
would be carrying matters a bit too far.

22
3.8. Irony
Another aspect, which needs special mention, is Chaucer's skilful use of irony which is so
elusive that it is often missed by an unwatchful reader. Chaucer is pulling the mask off the
fourteenth-century society, in his own special way. He does not use invective or lampoon as
his contemporaries. He treats his subjects in a tolerant, good-humoured, genial manner,
making a consistent, pervasive and subtle use of an irony which has earned the distinction of
being called 'Chaucerian'. The framework of the pilgrimage in which all these worldings are
placed, is a constant point of reference and works almost as a springboard for the ironical
tone. These men and women, starting off in quest of Divine Love, strangely enough have no
place for it in their hearts at this moment. All of them are in some way or other characterized
by their attitude towards money. Whether it be an indifference to it as in the case of the four
ideal portraits of the Knight, the Clerk, the Parson and the Ploughman, or a desire to acquire
it by fair means or foul, as is the case with the rest of them. In fact, love for money, not love
for god, becomes a touchstone for testing the virtue of the whole company.
Chaucer's clever use of the persona operates as a necessary functional device for the
irony. As mentioned earlier, Chaucer, the pilgrim is presented as a naïve, gullible,
unsuspecting observer who accepts things at face value. He approves whole heartedly of the
Prioress's behaviour and so also of the Monk’s disregard for discipline laid down by his
orders. He has never seen such another Miller, Reeve, Manciple; there has never been another
man so virtuous as the Friar;; the Merchant is worthy, the Lawyer was excellent, the Wife of
Bath is a ‘worthy woman’ and so he goes on about all of them. The explicit manifestation of
evil in the figures of the Summoner and the Pardoner is however too blatant to befool even a
simpleton like this pilgrim Chaucer. In these last two portraits therefore we find a downright
condemnation of the wicked ways practised by both. For the rest of the portraits however,
Chaucer the Pilgrim goes on observing details and believing whatever he sees, to be good.
However, we must not forget the poet Chaucer who is unmasking these worldlings by
showing the discrepancy in the profession and action of each one of them. The Monk may
prove to be a good master, but the moment we remember his placing in life, all the qualities
which the pilgrim Chaucer approves in him, now prove to be misplaced. The same applies to
the Prioress, to the Lawyer, to the Physician and almost all the rest of them. At times the poet
Chaucer creeps in unobtrusively in comments which juxtapose seemingly unrelated things,
for example, he says of the Wife of Bath:
She was a worthy womman al her lyve
Housbondes at chirchedore she haddefyve (Lines: 459-60)
What could be the connection between her worthiness and the number of husbands she had
had? We are forced to question ourselves and thereby read between the lines. Sometimes a
deft twist of meaning is given to the entire portrait by just one line appended to its end. For
example, after having described the Physician as unparalleled in the world, Chaucer
concludes the sketch thus:

23
 For gold in phisik is a cordial
Thercfore he lovede gold in special. ( Lines: 443-44)
Irony often gives rise to humour and we cannot help smiling when the pilgrim Chaucer quite
innocently comments on the intelligence of the Manciple who could fool the thirty men-of-
law for whom he works:
Now is not that of god a ful fair grace
That swich a lewedmannes wit shal pace
The wisdom of an heepe oflerned men? (Lines: 573-745)
Certainly we are not expected to believe that the cunningness of the Manciple is a grace of
god.The naive narratormay speak approvingly but it is the poet who is making us aware of
the sneaky ways of the Manciple.A moral yardstick is surely being applied here and we can
catch the irony only if we read between the lines.
The readers an constantly subjected to a kind of double vision which by implication puts
things in their correct perspective and we see the pilgrims in their true colours. The attitude of
the poet, however, continues to have a tolerance for all human frailties, therefore the satire
never even borders on the invective and the world remains cheerful.

3.9. The Debate about the Actual Number of Pilgrims

Before we move on to a discussion of individual pilgrims, I would like to point out two facts
in the General Prologue which seems inconsistent with the initial plan. The first of these
occurs in Line 164 in which Chaucer mentions three priests in attendance on the Prioress.
Later when the Host speaks to the Nun's priest, it seems that instead of three there is only one.
Moreover, if there are three priests then it upsets the whole calculation of 'nine and twenty'
and it becomes instead 31:
Knight, squire, yeoman 3
Franklin 1
Prioress and her chaplain 2
Prioress's priests 3
Clerk and parson 2
Monk, Friar 2
Summoner, Pardoner 2
Five Gluildsmen and their Cook 6
Merchant, Manciple, Shipman 3
Milier, Reeve, Ploughman 3

24
Wife of Bath 1
Chaucer, the narrator 1

Thus the 'three' priests do not fit in this scheme. Therefore, either there is a mistake here or
there is a change of plan.
The second inconsistency lies in the difference between the initially stated plan of the tales
and the change it later undergoes. In the General Prologue the plan is stated quite simply. As
the Host tells the company:
That each of yor, to shorte with your weye
In this viageshaltelle tales tweye
To Caunterburyward, I mean it so,
And Homeword he shalrellenothere two, (Lines: 791-94).
If this plan is to be followed then it clearly implies that each pilgrim will be relating four
tales. This means 116 in all if there are twenty nine pilgrims. If the thirtieth member of the
company i.e. Chaucer, also gets his share of tales then it would make it 120 in all. But here
too the poet deviates from the plan. Later in the Prologue to the Parson's tale, the Host tries to
persuade him:
Ne breke there natourepley,
For every man save thou hath told his tale,(Parson’s Prologue Lines 24-25)
If the above statement is to be followed then it would mean that each pilgrim is required to
tell only two tales, one while going to Canterbury and other while coming back. The
unfinished nature of the tales prevents us from arriving at any conclusion regarding, the
whole plan. But one fact is clear, that the work, as it stands today, has no two tales allotted to
one pilgrim. On the other band, we do have the extra Canon's Yeoman's Tale. One can say
the pilgrim Chaucer does relate two tales; the interrupted tale of Sir Thopas and the prose tale
of Melibee. But we must remember that the prose tale of Melibee is related only after the
Host disapproves of the tale of Sir Thopas and makes Chaucer leave it unfinished.

With the General Prologue in part, and with the Canterbury Tales on the whole, Chaucer
ushered into the world of poetry, new subjects and new methods of treatment. This was
perhaps his greatest achievement because when he began to write, the adventures and
romances of the knights and their ladies, had begun to lose their charm. Chaucer drew upon
reality, upon people he met daily and who were familiar figures to everyone because they
were English people and not figures drawn, from French, Italian or Latin literature. Not only
were the subjects new, Chaucer's method of treating them was new too. With him, comes the
conversational note, into English poetry. His easy flowing metre succeeded in removing the
monotony and complications which were there earlier in the octosyllabic couplets and long

25
involved stanzas.Chaucer's seven-line stanza and the ten or eleven syllabled couplets were
refreshing. His gentle humour and seemingly serious but jesting manner makes Chaucer a
delight to read. As a teller of stories and as a painter of portrait in words, Chaucer remains
unsurpassed even today.

26
4. Textual Analysis of the General Prologue
4.1. The Beginning

4.1.1. The Opening Lines

Lines 1-18
When that April with his showers soote
The drought of March hath percedto the roote…
………………………………………………………….
The hoolyblissful martir for to seke
That hen ath holpen whan that they were seeke

4.1.1.1. Detailed Paraphrase

When April with its sweet showers has pierced the drought of March to the root and every
vein of the plants in such liquid or sap that has the power to bring about the flowering of the
plants; when the West Wind/ Zephyr, also with its sweet breath has in every wood and
fieldbreathed life into the young plants and the young sun has run half its course in the zodiac
sign of Aries, and the small birds are making melody,those that sleep all night with their eyes
openbecause Nature provokes them thus in their hearts, then people/folk long to go on
pilgrimagesand pilgrims to seek foreignshores, to distant shrines, known in various lands; and
especially from every shire’s end of England, to Canterbury they travel to seek the holy and
blessed martyr who had helped them when they were sick.

4.1.1.2. Comment
In these first eighteen lines of the prologue, Chaucer has built a very effective case in favour
of a pilgrimage. He sets the scene in spring time – month of April to be exact, and structures
the passage on a pattern of cause and effect – when certain conditions develop in the natural
world then certain corresponding events take place in the world of men. The regenerative
power of spring that is felt in Nature and can be seen in the flowering plants and the singing
birds, finds its equivalent in a desire in human beings for a regeneration that is not physical
but spiritual. The logical sequence is built up in the first few lines using the words ‘whan’ and
‘and’ repeatedly, linking various examples to illustrate the pattern of cause and effect. Thus
‘when’this happens and this and this too…then…this also happens…the poet seems to be
saying.
The long harsh winter is over and so also the deadness associated with it. The sweet showers
of the month of April have stirred new life into the natural world.The sap in the veins of the
plants, the flowers, the west wind, the singing birds all together point to a world which is
waking up from a deep winter slumber. The imagery is drawn from Nature quite effortlessly
and places emphasis on life being renewed in the natural world. Equally effortless is the

27
rhyming couplet which will be used by the poet in the entire work. Thecoupletholds the idea
in two lines that rhyme and yet carries it over beyond the rhyme at times to include other
relevant illustrations.
The sun is called young because it has just begun its journey into the twelve signs of the
Zodiac. It is in the first sign of Aries. It is almost as though the sun too has just been reborn.
This physical regeneration in the Natural world urges a corresponding spiritual regeneration
in the world of men.
The holy blissful martyr is Saint Thomas ´a Beckett whose shrine is at Canterbury and was a
popular spot for pilgrimages.
The first eighteen lines form one long sentence beginning with a cause and ends with a
consequence. When…then…Chaucer has quite skillfully drawn a parallel between physical
regeneration in Nature and a metaphorical regeneration in the world of men. (Please refer
Section 3.6 for more details).

Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 1 – 18

Whan when
Shouressoote Sweet showers
droghte drought
perced pierced
roote root
veyne vein
Swich liquor Such liquid or moisture or sap
Of which vertu By virtue of which
Engendered is the
The flower is generated or created
flour
Zephirus The west wind
eek also
breeth breath
Tendrecroppes Tender/soft shoots of young plants
Yonge sonne The sun that has just begun its journey into the zodiac
Ram Ram is the sign of Aries that runs from mid-March to mid-April

28
 Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 1 – 18

The sun has run half its course in the sign of Aries or the Ram. This
Half coursyronne means that the sun is in the second half of its course.i.e. in the month of
April
Smalefoweles Small birds
Makenmelodye Make music
Slepen al the nyght Sleep all night
Open ye Open eyes
Priketh hem Pricks them or incites them
Hircorages Their hearts
palmeres pilgrims
seken seek
Straungestrondes Foreign lands/shores
Ferne halwes Distant shrines
kowthe known
Sondrylondes Various /different lands
Every shire end Every country’s end
They wende Make their way
hooly holy
Blissful martir Blessed martyr (Saint Thomas a Beckett whose shrine is at Canterbury)
Hem hath holpen Had helped them
seeke sick

4.1.2. The Narrator Enters

Lines 19 –34
Bifil that in that seson n a day
In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay …
………………………………………………………….
And made forward erly for to ryse,
To take oure way ther as yow devyse

29
4.1.2.1. Detailed Paraphrase
The first person speaker tells us that it so happened that one night as he lay at the Tabard Inn
in Southwark ready to go on his pilgrimage to Canterbury with a very devout spirit, that same
night about nine and twenty people came into that hostelry. It was chance that had brought
such widely different people together in one group. They were all pilgrims and were also
waiting to ride to Canterbury the next morning. The bedrooms and the stables of the Inn were
spacious and comfortable and they were all accommodated in the best way. After a short
while, when the sun had set, the narrator tells us that he had managed to speak with each one
of them so that he was part of their group straightaway. They made an agreement to rise early
next day and set off on their way.

4.1.2.2. Comment
In these lines we are introduced to the narrator. We know now that we are going to see the
events from the eyes of a first person speaker. At this stage we can assume that it is the poet
Chaucer who joins the group as a pilgrim himself. As the narrative progresses however, we
realize that it is a persona that the poet has created for himself. The persona is that of a naïve
and gullible observer, diametrically opposite to thediscerning and skillful poet who stands
behind his creation.The narrator is a sociable person because in the span of one single night
he is able to mingle well with the group and becomes a part of it.He makes it amply clear that
from now on he is going to narrate the events as they take place.

In the above lines we are given the exact location from where the pilgrimage will start --
Southwark which was a popular meeting place for the pilgrims in Chaucer’s time. We are
also informed about the exact destination to which they are all headed – namely Canterbury.
Such vivid and concrete details are part of Chaucer’s style.For contemporary listeners/readers
it made for authenticity and makes it easier for us today to imagine the geographical context.

Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 19 – 34

Bifil It so happened
The district in London just south of London bridge on river Thames.
Southwerk Chaucer provides a concrete detail here with which his contemporary
readers would be all too familiar.
A short armorial coat often embroidered. The inn bears this name and
Tabard
probably has a sign outside with a tabard on it.
wenden To go
As I lay While I was there
Ful devout corage With very devout spirit; Chaucer is a true pilgrim

30
 Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 19 – 34

hostelrye inn
There is much debate about the number of pilgrims. See section 3.9 for
Nyne and twenty details. If we count the pilgrim Chaucer and the Host too, there would
be Thirty two pilgrims in all.
sondry Various sorts
By aventure By chance
Woldenryde Wished to ride
chambres bedrooms
wyde spacious
Esed ate beste Accommodated in the best way
Sonnewas to reste The sun had set
Hem everichon Everyone of them
FelaweshipAnon Their company at once
Made forward Made an agreement
Erly for to ryse To rise early
Ther as I yow
In the way that I shall explain/describe to you.
devyse

4.1.3. TheNarrator Continues

Lines 35 – 42

Butnathless, while I have tyme and space

Er that I ferther in this tale pace …
………………………………………………………….
And eek in what array that they were inne;
And at a knight wol I firstbegin.

4.1.3.1. Detailed Paraphrase

The first person narrator continues. Now he lays out a plan. He says that while he has time
and space and before he moves any further in this tale he is going to describe these pilgrims.

31
He will tell us how they appeared to him. He will tell us who they were, what was their social
rank and also how they were dressed. He decides to begin with the Knight.

4.1.3.2. Comment
The narrator, whom we may also call the pilgrim Chaucer, has laid out a plan according to
which he is going to describe each and every pilgrim. He lists the things he is going to
include in the descriptions – who they were, their rank or social standing in life and their
clothing. Had the poet Chaucer stuck to the above plan we would have had a series of
repetitive and monotonous portraits thus taking away from the interest of the work. As we
proceed in the Prologue further we find that each description is different from the other. The
poet does not adhere to his plan even though the above mentioned details are included in the
portraits. It makes for a lot of variety.
A distinction between the poet Chaucer and the pilgrim Chaucer has begun to emerge.
The pilgrim Chaucer is genial and friendly and at the same time extremely observant.
However, he is not judgmental He manages to talk to all the pilgrims and find out enough
about them to give us a descriptionof each one of them. Behind it all of course is the poet
Chaucer who is determining what this persona will observe and how he will present it to the
readers. Thus there is always an underlying meaning in what is stated obviously. All is not
what it seems and this makes for the famous Chaucerian irony that is constantly at work in
the General Prologue. The narrator may innocently believe whatever the pilgrims tell him but
each word is carefully chosen by the poet and is filtered through his intelligence. Each detail
is includedwith a purpose and we have to be on our guard all the time to understand the real
intent behind the words of the pilgrim Chaucer.

Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 34 – 42

natheless nonetheless
Tyme and space Time and space
Me thynketh I think
Acordaunt to resoun In accord with reason or according to reason
condicioun circumstances
Ech of hem Each of them
It semed me It seemed to me
Whiche they weren Who they were
What degree What social rank
eek also

32
 Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 34 – 42

array Clothing or dress

knyght knight

4.2. The Pilgrims

Of the Company of nine and twenty ‘sondry folks’, Chaucer describes twenty-one pilgrims
individually, five of them, the Guildsmen, he describes as a group and four of them (five if
you count Chaucer himself) he mentions only and does not describe. Though he simply says
that he has not put the pilgrims in order of rank or degree, he does begin at the top with the
Knight who is accompanied by his son the Squire and his attendant, the Yeoman.
Muriel Bowden’s A Commentary on the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, has been
referred to extensively in the following analysis of the pilgrims. A detailed reference of the
same can be found in the list of suggested books for further reading.

4.2.1. The Knight

Lines 43 – 78
A Knyghttherwas, and that a worthy man
That fro the tymethat he first bigan …
………………………………………………………….
For he was late ycome from his viage,
And wente for to do his pilgrimage.

4.2.1.1. Detailed Paraphrase

Chaucer begins the portrait by telling us that there was a Knight who was a worthy man who
from the time that he first began to ride out, loved chivalry, truth, honour, freedom and
courtesy. He had proved himself worthy in his lord’s wars and had fought wars in such far off
places that no man had gone farther than him. A long list of his expeditions and achievements
follows. Chaucer tells us that the Knight had fought in Christian as well as heathen lands and
was honoured for his worthiness. He was at Alexandria when it was won and he had also
occupied the place of honour many times above knights of all nations in Prussia. He had also
campaigned in Lithuania and in Russiaso often that no Christian man had ever done so. He
had also been at Algeciras and Morocco as well as at Ayasand Attalia when they were won,
and in the Mediterranean he had been at many a noble expeditions. He had been at fifteen
mortal battles and had fought for the Christian faith at Tlemcen three times in formal duels
and each time he had slain his enemy.

33
 Chaucer once again calls the Knight ‘worthy’ and tells us that this same ‘worthy’ knight
had at one time been with the lord of Balat against another heathen in Turkey and had an
outstanding reputation. Chaucer tells us that although he was worthy he was wise too and of
his manner he ws as meek as a maid. He never spoke a rude word in all his life to any sort of
person. He was a truly perfect gentle Knight. But to tell about his clothing Chaucer says that
though his horse was good the Knight himself was not gaily dressed. He wore a tunic of
coarse cloth all stained by the marks of his armour for he had recently come back from his
expedition and came straightaway to do his pilgrimage.

4.2.1.2. Comment
In this group of pilgrims the Knight occupies the highest social status.He is the first member
of the Military group in the Prologue. He is a professional soldier and represents the world of
chivalry. Chaucer, the narrator, begins his description with a general observation on his
character as a whole, calling him a ‘worthy’ man. The word worthy occurs almost five times
in the entire portrait and never once is it used ironically. He personifies all the virtues
associated with the nobility and has to be seen as an ideal figure. The narrator calls him a
‘Verray parfit, gentilknyght’ (72). To understand the concept of knighthood and also of
chivalry, it is worthwhile to glance back to its origins. As Muriel Bowden explains:
Before the close of eleventh century, chivalry as we understand it today, did not exist
as an institution. It was not until 1095, when Urban II, in proclaiming the First
crusade, welded together the cross and the sword, that the Christian ideal of the order
of knighthood was created and took such high position in man’s aspiration Urban
commanded that the members of Christ’s army should be ‘wise’, provident,
temperate, learned, peace-,making, truth-seeking, pious, just, equitable, pure,’ - a
formidable order to be addressed to men very few of whom up to this moment, had
been in the habit of exercising any of those virtues. It was inevitable, of course, that
few would ever attain, either then or in the centuries to follow, the exalted standard
set by Urban II..... What had the greatest importance for the world, however, was the
extraordinary fact that all Christendom seized so gladly and so immediately upon
Urban’s standards, and used them as a measure of an ideal “parfit gentilknyght”; the
knight was henceforth to be the champion of the church, the righteous and implacable
enemy of the infidel, the compassionate protector of the weak and oppressed, the
defender of all Right and Justice.--- By the fourteenth century everyone knew how the
true knight should conduct himself, and everyone knew how seldom he was
encountered in the world of actuality. . .
(M. Bowden: A Commentary on the General Prologue, P. 45).
Chaucer’s Knight is a personification of all the above listed virtues and hence is called
perfect by him in so many words. An impressive list of his campaigns (though not put in
chronological order) nevertheless shows that the Knight has performed his role of a crusader
well. Yet he is not just a soldier. Apart from valour his values include truth, honour, liberty

34
and modesty. This true and perfect knight is also wise and has never shown ‘vileyne’ to any
manner of human being.Occupying the position that he does he inspires others to follow his
example.
His clothing is simple and the details reveal a lot his professionalism and sincerity He
does not believe in ostentation unlike many other pilgrims we will see subsequently. The
marks of his armour on his tunic reveal that heis an active soldier and at the same time
sincere in his religious pursuit of spiritual regeneration.He rides a good horse, which is a
necessity of his profession, yet his outward appearance is not smart which could only mean
that he does not care for it. Nothing is ornate about him. Moreover, he has lost no time from
the moment he returned from the wars, to come for this pilgrimage. In the whole company
gathered here, perhaps he is the only one who has the religious object of the pilgrimage
uppermost in his mind. He is widely travelled.
It should be noted that in the figure of the Knight Chaucer has completely refrained from
satirizing the institution of chivalry which in the fourteenth century, was on its decline and
had a very negative side to it. Instead he gives us here an ideal representation of that order,
perhaps one of the few survivors of the old order.

Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 43 – 78

worthy deserving
fro from
Riden out Ride out, go on campaigns
chivalrie chivalry
trouthe fidelity
fredom generosity
curteisie Courteous behaviour
werre war
therto moreover
ferre further
cristendom Clothing or dress
hethenesse Knight
Alisaundre Alexandria (Egypt)
wonne won

35
Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 43 – 78

Oftetyme Many a time

Bord bigonne Sat at the head of the table/ at a place of honour
Abovenallenacions Above all nations
Pruce Prussia
Lettow Lithuania
reysed campaigned
Ruce Russia
So ofte of his degree So often of his rank
Gernade Grenada
seege siege
Hadde he be Had he been
Algezir Algeciras
Belmarye Benmarin (Southern Morocco)
Lyeys Ayas in Armenia (modern Turkey)
Satalye Attalia
Grete See Mediterranean Sea
armee Military expeditions
Mortal batailles mortal combats/battlesfought till death
Foughten for our
Fought for our faith i.e. Christianity
feith
Tramyssene Tlemecen (Western Algeria
Lystesthries Tournament thrice
Ay slayn his foo Each time slain his foe
Ilke worthy knyght Same worthy knight
somtyme At one time
Palatye Balat
agayn against

36
 Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 43 – 78

Everemoore Evermore/all the time

Sovereynprys Outstanding reputation
wys wise
His port His behaviour
Meeke as a mayde Humble or gentle as a maid
Vileynye Discourtesy / rude word
ne sayde never spoke
unto to
No maner wight Any sort of person
Parfit perfect
Tellen yow Tell you
hors horse
Nat gay Notgaily
fustian Coarse cotton
Wered a gypon Wore a tunic
Bismotered stained
habergeon armour
Late ycome Very recently
From his viage From his expedition
Wente for to doon Went to do

4.2.2. The Squire

Lines 79 – 100
With him ther was his sone, a yongSquier,
A lovyere and a lusty bacheler …
………………………………………………………….
Curteis he was, lowely, and sevysable,
And carf before his fader at the table.

37
4.2.2.1. Detailed Paraphrase
Chaucer moves on to the second portrait in the gallery –that of the Squire. He tells us that
accompanying the knight was his young son, the Squire who was a lover and a lively
bachelor and the first thing that strikes Chaucer about the appearance of this man is that his
locks (hair) were curled so perfectly that it seemed as if they had been pressed in a curler.
Chaucer guesses that he must have been around twenty years old. He was of moderate
heightand wonderfully agile and of great strength. He had been for a time on acavalry
expedition in Flanders, in Artois and in Picardy and he conducted himself welleven in this
short span of time in the hope that he would stand in his lady’s good graces.
Moving on further while noticing another detail about the Squire’s appearance, Chaucer
tells us that his coat was embroidered as if it were a meadow, full of fresh flowers, white and
red. All day he was singing or playing the flute and looked as fresh as is the month of May.
He next describes his gown which was short with long and wide sleeves. We are told that the
Squire knew how to sit on a horse and could ride it well. He also knew how to compose songs
and could joust and dance as well as draw and write. He loved so passionately that at
nighttime he slept no more than a nightingale. He was courteous, humble and willing to serve
and also carved before his father at the table.

4.2.2.2. Comment
The young Squire is next in line in social hierarchy. He is training to become a Knight but
while his father’slife is devoted to his religious and military obligations, the young son’s life
revolves around love. His desire to impress his lady love lies behind all that he does. Thus he
can write lyrics, play music and even draw. In fact he is so much in love that he can hardly
sleep at night. There is a wide difference between father and son. Where one is sober,
mellowed, simple and dignified, the other, the Squire, is gay, high-spirited, fashionably
dressed in bright and modish clothes. The simile used by Chaucer to describe this young man,
puts him in a nut-shell. He is “as fresh us is the month of May”, Chaucer describes him as a
lusty bachelor. The word bachelor had more meaning attached to it than what we understand
from it today. As Bowden explains: “when a Squire was ready to graduate to knighthood in
the chivalric organization, he was called a “bachelor”, and often the term continued in use for
a recently made or young knight” (Bowden, p. 75).
The Squire is smart, handsomely dressed, and variously accomplished in singing,
dancing, jousting for his lady, writing poetry and so on. His physical description measures up
to the description of any hero of the romances in vogue. He is of great strength’, having a
proportionate physique, wonderfully agile and worthy to be received inthe order of chivalry.
The virtue of humility also finds proper manifestation in this bright and gay figure:
Cuteis he was, lowely, and servysable
And carfbiforn his fader at the table. (Lines: 99-100)

38
 To carve the roast is one of the frequently mentioned obligations of a squire. The art of
carving was a much prized art in the Middle Ages and had various techniques which were
difficult to master.
The Squire’s Military exploits are nearer home as he would have only recently begun his
fighting career.
The only area where one can detect a slight hint of the characteristic Chaucerian irony, is
in the superfluities of dress of the Squire. The pulpit of course was bitter even about the
unnecessary deaths that resulted from the military sports such as jousting and tournaments.
Chaucer merely mentions the facts yet the fourteenth century reader, and we with a little
knowledge of the age can read much between the lines.

Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 79 – 100

sone son
lovyere lover
bacheler A young man training to become a knight
Lokkescrulle Locks curled
Leyd in presse Laid in the pressing machine
Evenelengthe average height
Wonderlydelyvere Wonderfully agile
Greet strengthe Great strength
somtyme sometime
chyvachie Cavalry expedition
In Flanders, Artois and Picardy – as compared to his father’s extensive
Flaundres, in Artois,
expeditions,the Squire’s exploits have been closer to home - only to
and Pycardie
France and northern Europe.
Born hymweel Conducted himself well
So litel space So little space of time
Stonden in his lady
Stand in his lady’s good graces or favour
grace
embrouded embroidered
meede meadow

39
 Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 79 – 100

Whyte and reede White and red

syngynge singing
floytynge Fluting or playing the flute
Short was ….wyde The short coat with long wide sleeves was fashionable at the time
Wel endite Could write lyrics for his songs
Juste and eek daunce Joust and also dance
Weelputreye Draw well
nyghtertale Night time
Lowely modest
servysable Willing to serve
Carved --Being in the service of his father he performed the duty of
Carf
carving the meat before him
fader father

4.2.3. The Yeoman

Lines 101 – 117

AYemanhadde he and servantznamo

At that tyme, for hymliste so…
………………………………………………………….
An horn he bar, the bawdryk was of grene
A forster was he, smoothly, as I gesse.

4.2.3.1. Detailed Paraphrase

The third portrait that completes the Military Group in the pilgrims’ gallery is that of the
Yeoman. He tells us that the Knight had a Yeoman and no more servants. In other words the
Yeoman too was in service of the Knight and at that time it pleased him to ride with him in
this manner. He was clothed in a coat and hood of green and carried a sheaf of peacock
arrows under his belt very properly. He knew well how to take care of his equipment and
none of his arrows fell short of their target because of drooping feathers. In his hand he
carried a mighty bow. He had closely cropped hair and a brown face. He knew the skills of

40
woodcraft. Upon his arm he wore a bracer or an armguard to protect his arm against the
bowstring, and on one side he carried a sword and a shield while on the other an elegant
dagger which was well ornamented and as sharp as the point of a spear; he wore a bright
silver medal on his breast, representing St. Christopher. He carried a horn and the shoulder
strap was green. Chaucer guesses that he must be a forester.

4.2.3.2. Comment
The Yeoman is the second attendant upon the Knight, after the young Squire. In Chaucer’s
age a yeoman usually meant an attendant or assistant to an official. The modern meaning of
small landowner came into use only in the fifteenth century. We are told very little about his
physical appearance – only that he has a brown face and closely cropped hair, indicating the
outdoor nature of his profession.Rest of the emphasis falls on his equipment and we learn a
lot about the yeoman’s professional skill thereby. Chaucer seems to be all admiration for this
disciplined, and efficient man who could even ‘dress his takel yeomanly’ (106). He is a
vigilant soldier, bears a mighty bow in hand and his bright peacock arrows do not droop with
the weight of feathers too long and thus can hit the target accurately. His clothes tell us that
he is a forester. Upon his arm he wears an armguard and by his side hangs a shield and a
sword and even a dagger. So he is well equipped not only as a forester or a game keeper but
also as a fit attendant to the Knight. The horn, which was an essential equipment for a
forester, is worn by the Yeoman, supported by the ‘bawdryk’ or belt worn diagonally across
the body.
He also wears the gleaming silver image of St. Christopher who was not only the patron
saint of foresters but also of all artisan classes, and was supposed to guard against accident.
There is very little satire in this portrait hut it recalls an important addition to the variety
of arms used in war. The invention of the long bow had revolutionized the English warfare.
The long range of this bow had even posed a challenge to the mounted soldiers e.g. the
Knights and the Squires. With its help, the soldier on foot could shoot down from a greater
distance and could kill even a man mounted on a horse. Infact, the whole hierarchy of the
army had been challenged by the introduction of this long bow.

Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 101 – 117

Servantznamo Servants no more

Hymliste ride so It pleased him to travel in this manner
cote coat
Pecokarwes Peacock arrows

41
 Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 101 – 117

Bar ful thriftily Carried very properly

Dresse his
Cared for his equipment as a yeoman should
takelyemanly
Arwesdroupednoght Arrows did not fall short
Fethereslowe Drooping feathers
Baar a mighty bowe Carried a mighty bow.
Not heed Closely cropped hair
Broun visage Brown face
bracer armguard
Swerd and a bokeler Sword and a shield
Harneisedwel Well mounted
St Christopher was the patron saint of foresters and was supposed to
Christopher
ward off against accidents
bawdryk Shoulder strap or belt

4.2.4. The Prioress

Lines 118 – 162

Ther was also a Nonne, a Prioress,

That of her smylyng was ful simple and coy; …
………………………………………………………….
On which therwasfirst write a crowned A,
And after Amor vincit omnia.

4.2.4.1. Detailed Paraphrase

Therewas also a nun, says Chaucer, a Prioress, who was very simple and modest and her
greatest oath was by Saint Loy and her name was Madame Eglantine. She sang the divine
service very well intoning in her nose in a graceful manner. She also spoke French very well
and elegantly in the accent of the school of Startford at the Bow, because she is not familiar
with the French spoken in Paris.At meals she was conducted herself well for she had
excellent table manners and never let a morsel fall from her lips nor did she wet her fingers in

42
the sauce. She knew well how to carry a morsel to her mouth and be careful that not a drop
fell upon her breast. Her greatest pleasure in life was adhering to good manners and etiquette.
She wiped her upper lip so clean that she left no greasy marks on her cup after she had drunk
from it. She reached out for her food in a very seemly manner.Surely says Chaucer, she was
of excellent behaviour and very pleasant and amiable in her manner. She took pains to imitate
the manners of the court and to be considered worthy of reverence.
But to speak of her conscience or sensibility, she was so charitable and so compassionate
that she would weep if she saw a mouse caught in a trap and if it were dead or bleeding. She
had some small dogs that she fed with roasted meat or milk and white bread. But she wept
bitterly if one of them were dead or if someone hit it smartly with a stick. Then she was all
full of feeling and tender heart.
Her wimple was pleated in a very becoming manner, her nose was well formed and her
eyes were grey as glass, her mouth was very small and soft and red and she also had a fair
forehead which Chaucer thinks was almost a span broad and he also adds that she had a good
figure.
Her cloak was very well made, and she wore around her arm a string of coral beads with
large green gaudies in between and from it hung a brooch of gold with the letter ‘A’ written
on it followed by Amor Vincet Omnia “Love conquers all”.

4.2.4.2. Comment
The Prioress belongs to the second group of pilgrims, that includes the Monk and the Friar.
These three are all members of the regular orders of the Church as opposed to the seculars
e.g. the bishops, priests, deacons etc. who are involved in the day to day administration of the
Church. The Prioress heads a convent and since nun’s in Chaucer’s day was mostly drawn
from the upper classes, it is fitting that her group should follow that of the Knight. Let us now
briefly take a look at the making of these nuns to understand better the description of our
Prioress.
It was almost always the unfortunate dowerless daughters who were forced to choose the
convent as the only alternative to marriage. There were not many professions available for
women of such placing in society. Governesses came into being much later. As they had no
dowry to their name, such gentlewomen could never hope to marry. Infact they were worse
off than the women of the lower class who had their invaluable services of physical labour, to
offer as their dowry. So there were almost never any women of the lower class choosing the
nunnery. Because of their ability for manual labour, these women were never a burden on
their family even if they remained unmarried. The dowerless gentlewomen on the other hand
could see no other solution to this problem except to step into a convent. Thus we can safely
assume that Chaucer’s “Lady Prioresse” does infact have an aristocratic background and as
we examine her portrait, she proves to fit the bill perfectly. The irony and the underlying
criticism in this portrait emerges from the discrepancy that lies between the expectations of a
profession and the actual behaviour which falls sadly short of it.

43
 As the pilgrim Chaucer narrates the various attributes of this pretty Prioress, it seems he
is approving of her whole-heartedly. But the pointers are there in things never said, assertions
not made. So when he tells us approvingly of her smile which was ‘fulsymple and coy’ (119),
her gentle oath ‘by St. Loy’; her name Madame Eglantyne, her nasal accent, her fetish French
etc., we may get taken in and start believing that she is indeed a fine nun. But the moment we
remember her placing and profession in life, we are checked in our responses and realize how
much Chaucer, the poet, has revealed just by making the pilgrim Chaucer report external
facts. Her physical features as well as her name are all characteristic of the courtly heroines;
Fulsemylyhirwympulphynched was.
Hire nose tretys, her eyengreye as glas,
Hir mouth fulsmal and thertosofte and reed;
But sikerly she hadde a fair forheed;
It was almost a spanne brood I trowe;
For, hardily, she was not undergrowe. (Lines: 151-56).

On the face of it Chaucer is merely listing the details of the Prioress’s physical appearance.
She is indeed a beautiful lady, with her shapely nose, grey eyes, small soft red mouth, broad
forehead and a full figure! but Chaucerian irony is doing its work subtly and unobtrusively
even in these lines. When we recall that Madam Eglantyne’s fair broad forehead should, as a
rule, have been covered in company; that her full figure which draws a remarkably restrained
comment from the pilgrim Chaucer, should have been hidden in her shapeless clothes, we can
notice the sharp wit which is constantly satirizing this charming Nun. The satire however is
sympathetic and never compromises the dignity of the Prioress.
The description goes on in the same vein and Chaucer tells us of her affected French, her
exquisite table manners, her tender heart which bleeds for the animals rather than her fellow
beings, her concern with her appearance. Even her oath of St. Loy reminds us that nuns are
not supposed to swear. We can see how the humour and the irony can be located in the
incongruity between profession and action. The Prioress endeavours to be a lady at all times
rather than be a nun. All the physical characteristics which would have been appealing in a
lady of aristocratic standing are here misplaced in a prioress of the convent. Nuns were
forbidden to keep pets, yet she has ‘smalehounde’ whom she feeds with roasted meat and
milk. Though, the inscription on her broach is ‘Amor Vincet Omnia’ meaning ‘Love
conquers all’ we do wonder how she interprets it? Is it sacred love or profane. Though
Chaucer is tolerant of the Prioress’s feminine foibles yet he cannot help an explicit criticism
of her conscience which bleeds for a dead mouse but not for the sufferings of her fellow
being. Had it not been stated in the first line itself, that this lady is ‘a Nonne, a Prioresse’
(118), we might have been misled into approving of her. This beautiful, charming, romantic
and worldly figure is far removed from what she is supposed to be. It is her small weaknesses

44
however that individualize this Prioress. On the part of the poet however, there is an implied
comment on the social and economic circumstances which were forcing such women to take
to the Nunnery.
The Prioress is accompanied by another Nun, achaplain, and three priests. These four
pilgrims are just mentioned and not described individually. (Please refer to section 3.0 for the
controversy about the number of priests accompanying the Prioress).

Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 118 – 162

prioress The female head of a nunnery

symple simple
coy modest
gretteste greatest
ooth oath
but only
By Saint Loy – St. Eloi, Elegius, patron saint of goldsmiths . The
By Seinte Loy Prioress should not be swearing at all but even when she swears she
chooses a very mild oath.
cleped called
Eglentyne Rose briar. A name suited to the romances
Fulweel Very well
soong sung
Entuned in hir nose Intoned through her nose
Fulsemely Very becomingly
Spakful faire and
Spoke very well and gracefully
fetisly
scole school
Location of a Benedictine convent, at Stratford Bromley by Bow near
Stratford ate Bow
Middlesex, London.
Frensh of . . hire
French of Paris was unknown to her.
unknowne
At mete At table /meals

45
Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 118 – 162

Welytaught Well taught

With alle indeed
leet let
Ne wettehirfyngres Nor wet her fingers
In curteisiewas set Her courtly manners
Fulmuchelhir lest Very much her pleasure
coppe cup
Fulsemely In a very decorous manner
After hir mete she
Reached for her food
raughte
sikerly Surely, certainly
Greet desport Full of geniality
Amyable of port Amiable in her behavior
Peyenedhir She took pains
Countrefetecheere Imitate the manner
estatlich dignified
Digne of reverence To be considered worthy of respect
conscience sensibility
pitous Full of pity
She had small pet dogs whom she fed. The line comes as an anticlimax.
Of smalehounds . . . The narrator begins to talk of her sensibility, her charity and her pity
fed but instead of all of it being for her fellow human beings it is for her
pet dogs.
Wastel breed White bread
Soorewepte Wept sorely
Oon of hem One of them
Smoot it Smote/beat it
Yerdesmaerte Smartly with a stick

46
 Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 118 – 162

FulsemylyhirWymp Het wimple (covering for the neck) was pleated in a very seemly
ulpynched was manner
Nose tretys Nose was well formed
Eyengreye as glas Eyes gray as glass
sikerly Indeed
It was almost a span broad (about nine inches measuring from the
A spannebrood, I thumb to the little finger) I believe. Chaucer is being critical here
trowe because nuns were supposed to cover their forehead and not reveal it in
the latest fashion.
hardily certainly
cloke cloak
I was war I was aware
A peire of bedes Set of beads
In a rosary every eleventh bead was of a larger size and was called
Gauded al with ‘gaudy’ Here these gaudies are green in colour. While telling the
grene rosary, the gaudies remind the user to say an ‘our Father’ or a ‘Hail
Mary’.
Nuns were not supposed to wear accessories like brooches and rings.
A brooch of gold Once again Chaucer is being ironical while observing and merely
reporting facts.
Fulsheene Very bright
a crowned A An A with a crown. A could stand for ‘Amor’
Amor vincitomnia ‘Love conquers all’ The love referred to here is divine love.
chapeleyne assistant
Preestesthre Three priests

4.2.5. The Monk

Lines 165 – 207
AMonk ther was, a fair for the maistrie,
An outridere, that lovedevenerie…
…………………………………………

47
A fat swan loved he best of any roost.
His palfrywas as broun as is a berry.

4.2.5.1. Detailed Paraphrase

There was a Monk says Chaucer, who was an extremely fine one at that and he was an
outrider and loved hunting. He was a manly man and thus qualified enough to be an abbot.
He had many fine horses in his stable and when he rode people could hear his bridle bells
jingling in thewhistling windas clear and as loud as do the chapel bells, there where this lord
was incharge of the subordinate monastery.The rule of Saint Maurus or of Saint Benedictwas
not followed by this Monk because it was old and somewhat strict. He let the old things pass
away and followed the more relaxed or liberal customs of modern times.He gave not a
plucked hen for the text that says that hunters are not holy men, nor that a monkout of his
cloister is like the fish out of water This same text he considered not worth an oyster and the
narrator agrees with him and says his opinion was good. Why should a man study and make
himself mad by always poring over books in his cloister or work with his hands and labour as
Augustine bid? How shall the world be served? Let Augustine have the hard labour reserved
for him.Therefore he was a indeed a good horseman: He had greyhounds as swift as birds in
flight; Of tracking and hunting the hare was all his pleasureand he would by no means stop
himself from doing it.
Continuing in first person Chaucer the narrator observes that the sleeves of the Monk’s
coat were lined with fur and that too finest in the landand to fasten his hood under his chin he
had a very finely crafted pin made of gold in the shape of an elaborate love knotHis head was
bald and shone like glass as did his face like it had been rubbed with oil. He was quite plump
and his eyes were prominent and rolling in his head and gleamed like a furnace of lead. His
boots were supple and his horse in excellent condition. Now certainly we can say that he was
a handsome church official.He was not pale as a tormented ghost. A fat swan loved he best of
any roast. His horse was a brown as is a berry.

4.2.5.2. Comment
‘A Monk there was’ begins Chaucer, and we would expect a serious, uninteresting religious
old man vowed to a life of poverty, obedience and chastity as was expected of monastic
orders. What we see in fact is a flouting of all these vows thus an exposure on Chaucer’s part
of the reality behind the façade. Here we have a figure full of life, who more than his
religious duties ‘lovedevenerie’ i.e. hunting – and Chaucer’s contemporary readers knew that
hunting was forbidden to Monks. He is an ‘outrider’, a manly man who loves to ride out on
his ‘brown palfrey’ even though his ‘old and somdelstreit’ rules forbade a monk to leave his
cloister. This hunting Monk however is a strong virile man, and when he goes riding, men
can hear his hunting bells jingling in the distance, clear and loud ‘as dooth the chapel
belle.’(171)

48
 Notice how in this seemingly innocentdescription, a reminder of the Monk’s correct
placing in life has been implied in the reference to the chapel bells and our response is
checked and qualified.
The pilgrim Chaucer approves of this Monk who has radical views about the outdated
monastic observances:
This ilke Monk leetoldethynges pace,
And held asier the newe world the space. (Line: 175-6)
He does not care for the text which says that hunters cannot be holy men or that a monk out
of cloister is like a fish out of water. It is a stroke of devastating irony which brings the whole
fabric tumbling down when the pilgrim Chaucer agrees with the Monk’s views:‘And I seyde
his opinioun was good.’ (183) and proceeds to argue the case of the Monk. Why should he
study and force himself to always be pouring over a book, or toil with his hands and perform
physical labour as Saint Austen bid? Why should he stick to his cloister and observe the dull
routine of prayer, study, fasting and labour? Ironically, while the pilgrim Chaucer argues in
favour of the Monk, the poet Chaucer has listed the actual duties which should beperformed
by him and so lays bare the discrepancy between profession and action once again. Our Monk
loves the outdoor life and instead of having the pale looks of a man always confined indoors
and put to rigours of fasting, he is:‘a Lord ful fat and in good poynt;’ (200) He has no qualms
about gratifying his taste for fine clothes, choice of food, good horses etc:
His bootessouple, his hors in greet estaat
Now certainly he was a fair frulaat.
He was not pale, as a forpynedgoost:
A fat swan loved he best of any roost. (Line: 203-6)
He is a perfect picture of a successful man who thoroughly enjoys good life. His expensive
clothes and his habits show him to be a worldly man. It should be noted however that this
figure changes character when he comes to tell his tale and we have instead a sober, serious
man who seems exceedingly bookish. Chaucer has chosen to be inconsistent once again.

Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 165 – 207

A fair for the

A surprisingly fine one
maistrie
One who looks after the outlying properties belonging to a large
outrydere
monastic order
Lovedevenerie Loved hunting
To be an abbot able To be a fine abbot

49
Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 165 – 207

deyntee fine
rood rode
Brydelheere Bridle hear
gynglen jingling
Kepre of the celle In charge of the house
reule Rule (here monastic rule)
SeintMaure Saint Maurus, a disciple of St. Benedict
SeintBeneit Saint Benedict who was the founder of Western monasticism
Somdelstreit Somewhat strict
This ilke This same
Leet old thynges
Let old things pass away
pace
Heeld . . . space Upheld the freedom of modern times
yaf gave
A pulled hen A plucked hen that is worthless
recchelees careless/heedless(with respect to his duties as a monk)
cloystre monastery
Thilke text Same text
swynken labour
St. Augustine bid or commanded that men of religion should
Austyn bit
dophysical labour
A hunter on horseback who follows the path of the hare by its pricks or
prikasour
footprints
Prikyng and of
Tracking and hunting
huntiyng
Was al his lust Was all his pleasure
I seigh I said
Lined or trimmed at the edge( another reference t the monk’s
purfled
materialistic nature)

50
 Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 165 – 207

grys Grey squirrel fur

Fynesteof a lond Finest of the land
festne fasten
ywroght Wrought or made
Curious pin extraordinary
Love-knotte Brooch in the shape of a knot
Gretter ende larger end
balled bald
Shoon as any glas Shone as any glass
enoynt anoint
His eyenstepe and
His eyes were prominent and rolling in his head
rollynge in his heed
Stemedas a Gleamed like a
Forneys of a leed Furnace under a cauldron
Greet estaat Excellent state or condition
Fair prelaat Fine cleric
Forpynedgoost Starving and suffering ghost
Palfrey horse
Broun as a berye Brown as a berry

4.2.6. The Friar

Lines 208 – 269
A Frere ther was, a wantowne and a merye,
A lymytour, a fulsolempne man. …
…………………………………………
As doon the sterres in the frosty night.
This worthy lymytour was cleped Huberd.

51
4.2.6.1. Detailed Paraphrase
There was a Friar, a wanton and merry one, a limiter, a very solemn man. In all the four
orders of the friars there was no one that knows so much of flattering talk and elegant
speech.He had made many a marriage of young women at his own cost. Of his Order he was
a noble supporter. He was very well beloved and on good terms with Franklins everywhere in
his country, and also with worthy women of the town; for he had the power of confession, as
he said himself more than a parish priest, for he his Order gave him a license to do so. Very
sweetly he heard confession and pleasant was his absolution.He was an easy man to give
penance there where he knew he would get a good donation.For to give to a poor order (of
friars) is a sign that a man has confessed truly; if a man gave then the friar dared to assert that
he knew the man was repentant; For many a man is so hard in his heart that he cannot weep
even though he suffers painfully. Therefore, instead of weeping and prayers, one may give
silver to the poor friars.
His hood was stuffed full of knives and pins to give to fair wives. And certainly he had a
merry voice. He knew well how to sing and play on a rote (string instrument). Of singing
ballads he absolutely took the prize. His neck was white as the lily flower’ furthermore he
was strong as a champion. He knew the taverns well in every townand also every innkeeper
and barmaidbetter than he knew a leper or a beggarwoman; for a worthy man as he it was not
suitable due to his position to have acquaintance with sick lepers. It is not respectable; it may
not be profitable to deal with such poor people. But all with rich people and sellers of
victuals. And especially, wherever a profit was to be made, he was courteous and humble.
There was no man anywhere so capable as him. He was the best beggar in his house.
And gave a certain fee for his grant that none of his brothers (fellow friars) came to his
begging area. For though a widow did not have a shoe, so pleasant awas his ‘In principio’
that he would get a farthing from her before he went. His profit or income (from begging)
was much more than the rente he paid to his Order.
He could flirt and frolic as if he were a young puppy. He knew how to help settle
disputes on love days for there he was not like a cloistered monk with a threadbare cloak like
a poor scholar but he was like a Master of Arts or apope. His short cloakwas woollen and
rounded as a bell fresh form the press. In his affectation he lisped somewhat to make his
English sweet upon his tongue and I his harping when he had sung, his eyes twinkled in his
head exactly as do the stars on a frosty night. This worthy friar was called Huberd.

4.2.6.2. Comment
The third member of the first group of ecclesiastical characters is the Friar who besides being
worldly, is also wicked. His portrait is the lengthiest in the Prologue as it has sixty two lines
to it. In addition, he is one of the most strongly individualized portraits which is at the same
time typical, Apart from the Prioress, he is the only other member of the company who is
named in the General Prologue. Brother Hubert, as he is called by Chaucer, may have had
some actual real-life counterpart which could have led Chaucer to name him so early in the

52
work. Apart from this however, the name has not appeared in any records and there is nothing
in it to support the Friar’s nature as there was in the case of the Prioress.
For a full understanding of this character, we should turn back to history, to the beginnings of
the mendicant Orders some two hundred years before Chaucer’s time. Bowden explains:
When Chaucer was writing, four great orders of friars had long been established in
England. The friars were atfirst religious men who were dedicated to active service in
the world, in contradiction to the monks who were dedicated to cloistered
contemplation. The Dominicans, founded by St-Dominic in Spain in the early
thirteenth century, were the first in England, coming there in the year 1221. Because
they were organized primarily to combat heresy through preaching, the Dominicans
were often called the Preaching Friars;; they were also sometimes called either Black
Friars, because of their garb, or Jacobins, because of the situation of a House of theirs
in Paris on the Rue St. Jacques. The Fransiscans, founded by St. Frances in Italy about
the same time as the Dominicans, came to England in the Year 1224. Because St.
Francis placed great emphasis on humility and poverty, the Fransiscans were often
called the Minor Friars or Minorities; they were also sometimes called the Grey Friars
because of their grab. The third order of friars to come to England was that of the
Carmelites, or white Friars, in 1245. The Carmelites laid pretentious claims to having
been instituted by Elijah, but their rule was not formulated until the thirteenth century.
Finally, the Augustine or Austin Friars established themselves in England sometime
after 1256 when they were formally recognized. The Austin Friars said their true
founder was the fifth-century, St. Augustine of Hippo. But by the fourteenth-century
any one of these four orders differed from any other, only in name and dress, for all
had come to be dominated, at least in what they professed, by the ideals of St. Francis,
and all were classed together as “Mendicants” because they theoretically “begged
their support from the world.”
(Bowden, p. 119-20)
By Chaucer’s time however, this ‘begging’ which was permitted only as a necessity, became
the exceedingly profitable business of the Order leading to much corruption. Chaucer’s Friar
is a typical representative in that sense. He is a ‘lymytour’ which in the fourteenth century,
signified a begging friar to whom was assigned a certain district or limit within which he had
the right, sometimes the sole right, to beg.
The limiters were notorious for their illicit, immoral relation with women and Chaucer
comments on this aspect when he says:
He haddemaadful many a marriage
Of Yougewommen at his owene cost. (Lines: 212-13)
We are not to suppose even for one moment, that the Friar’s intentions behind getting these
girls married were disinterested and good. In all probability, these young girls had first been

53
seduced by him and had been his mistresses. Chaucer gives us a detailed account of his
seductive powers: his ‘typet’ (long pouch) is always full of the little trinkets that young
women love; he can delight them with ‘a murye note’ (235) when he sings as he plays on the
‘rote’ (a small harp), His ‘yeddynges’ or popular songs, were good enough to merit a prize
according to the narrator. In addition to this he is a strong, virile man, having the strength of a
champion and a pleasing appearance with a neck as white as the lily. The poet Chaucer here
juxtaposes two absolutely dissimilar images --strength of a champion and the delicateness of
a lily,probably with an intention of suggesting the comfortable, luxurious style of the Friar’s
life. The physical description befits such a life style:
But he was lyk a maister or a pope;
Of double worstede was his semy cope,
That rounded as a belle out of the presse. (Lines: 261-63)
His lisping, his sweet English, his harpings and his eyes which twinkled like stars on a frosty
night, all serve to attract the women towards him for the evil gratification of his carnal
desires.
Our Friar is a frequent visitor to the taverns of every town and knows well each inn-
keeper and every barmaid better than he knows the poor lepers of his area. Once again the
contrast implies a criticism. He certainly does not know or even care to know about the
people he should be caring for. In a tongue-in-cheek manner the poet Chaucer makes the
narrator agree that such a worthy man as the Friar should not be having any acquaintance
with the lepers. Therefore he deals only with the rich and is courteous and humble towards
them.
In a characteristic style the narrator praises the begging powers of Brother Hubert. Notice
the subtle and pervasive irony.
Ther was no man nowhere so vertuous.
He was the bestebeggere in his hous;
For thogh a wydehaddenoght a sho
So plesaunt was his In Principio,
Yet wolde he have a ferthynger he wente:
His purchas was welbettre than his rente.(251-6)
The seemingly innocent account begins with an assertion of the Friar’s virtue. What follows
however further exposes this ‘virtue’ for what it is because the Friar never hesitates to draw
out a penny even from a poor widow who has no shoes on her feet. Chaucer, the pilgrim, is
all praise for his begging abilities in choosing to include this detail the poet Chaucer exposes
the wickedness of the deed.

54
 To increase his earnings, the Friar has found another easy way out. He takes money from
the penitent in order to absolve them of their sins:
For many a man so harde is of his herte
He may not wipe al-though liyesooresmerte,
Therefore in stede of wepynge and preyeres
Men mooteyeve silver to thcpourefrers. (Lines: 229-32)
The argument that follows quite logically is stood on its head because we cannot grant the
initial premise itself. What kind of penitence is it which fails to wring out prayers and tears.
Men have found a comfortable way out and the Friars continue to line their own pockets. The
poet Chaucer is here exposing the evil practice of such an absolution that had become quite
common in his times. This is the first portrait where we see a complete lack of sympathy on
Chaucer’s part.The Friar comes across as a complete scoundrel.Yet the poet’s vision is too
humane to condemn him outright. We get a glimpse of it in the vivid and individualizing
detail of his eyes that twinkle like stars on a frosty night as the Friar goes about singing his
love ditties.

Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 208 – 269

Wantowne Lively, playful

merye merry
lymytour Licensed to beg in a limited area
solempne Pompous, impressive
The four orders of the friars: The Franciscans (the Grey Friars), the
Orders four Dominicans (The Black friars), The Carmelites (White Friars) and the
Austin Friars.
Noon that kan None that can
muchel much
daliaunce Flattery that is flirtatious
His ordre His order of Friars
Noble post Noble pillar
frankeleyns Householders, landowners
contree district
Power of The Friar claimed to have been given the power to hear people’s

55
Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 208 – 269

confessioun confession and absolve them of their sins

Moore than a curat More than a parish priest
He was licenciat He was licensed
Herde he Heard he
absolucioun absolution
Good pitaunce Good donation
Povreordre The order of the begging friars
yive give
Welyshrive Shriven or absolved of sin
dorste dared
Make avaunt assert
wiste knew
Sooresmerte Deeply pained
moote may
tipet long pocket in a cape
Farsed ful Stuffed full
Yeven give
Murye note Pleasant voice
rote String instrument
yeddings Songs, ballads
Flour-de-lys lily
tappestere barmaid
lazar leper
beggestere beggar
swich such
Accorded nat Accorded not, did not suit him
facultee position

56
Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 208 – 269

sike sick
It is nat honest It is not respectable
It may natavaunce It may not be advantageous to him
delen Deal with
Swichporaille Such poor people
vitaille food
Over al, ther as Above all, wherever
Lowely of servys Humble in offering his service
Certeyneferme Certain rent
graunt Licence (to beg)
In his haunt In his area or territory
sho shoe
ferthing farthing
er Before
His purchas …rente His gain or profit was much more than the rent he paid to his Order
rage frolic
Right a whelp Like a puppy or young dog
Days set aside for out of court settlement of disputes. This was done
Love days
through arbitration by the clergy.
Cloisterer One who lives in a cloister like a monk
cope cloak
maister Master of Arts
Double worsted woollen
Semi-cope Half cloak
Belle out of the
Curved out like a bell out of a press or mould
presse
lipsed Lisped
wantownesse Out of affectation

57
 Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 208 – 269

In his heed aright In his head certainly

doon do
sterres stars
cleped called

4.2.7. The Merchant

Lines 270 – 284

A Marchant was ther with a forked berd
In mottelee, and hye on horse he sat …
…………………………………………
For sothe he was a worthy man with alle
But sooth to seyn, I not how men hymcalle..

4.2.7.1. Detailed Paraphrase

There was a Merchant with a forked beard wearing multi-coloured clothes and he sat proudly
on his horse. Upon his head he wore a Flemish beaver hat and his boots were buckled
handsomely and elegantly. He spoke out his opinions quite impressively pronouncing always
the increase of his profits. He wished the sea to be guarded at all costs Between
Middleborough and Orwell. He knew well how to deal in foreign exchange. This worthy
man, says Chaucer, used his wit very well for no one could make out that he was in debt, he
was so dignified in his conduct with his buying and selling and his money lending. Truly he
was a worthy man indeed, but to tell the truth Chaucer says, he did not know what he was
called.

4.2.7.2. Comment
The Merchant is probably the wealthiest member of the rapidly rising middle class of
fourteenth century England, With his portrait begins a group of pilgrims that consists of
people who are all characterized by their attitude lo material possessions. Though numerous
and varied, difficult to classify as one group, they nevertheless share a love for money. The
fashionably dressed Merchant, heads the list.Chaucer calls him a ‘worthy’ man but the word
does not carry moral connotations here. The merchant is not worthy in the same sense as the
Knight was. The word is intended to imply criticism here for this man who is so blatantly
dishonest and devious.

58
The pilgrim Chaucerdoes call him ‘worthy’ but the last line of the portrait almost seems to
convey contempt for the merchant class:
But, sooth to seyn, I noot how men hymcalle. (Line: 284)
He does not even give him a fictitious name: Of course, the reasons may have been prudent
but the offhand manner in which Chaucer says it, implies indifference and contempt
more.The omission of his namehas been interpreted as deliberate on the poet’s part indicating
the condescending attitude that the courtly figures had towards the rising middle classesand
Chaucer was a court poet. The portrait however is a typical representation of a wealthy
section of fourteenth century society. Bowden points out another probable reason for omitting
his name:
“Medieval merchants, those men engaged in the whole-sale traffic of wool, hides,
cloth, iron and tin, were also bankers and money-lenders of the nation. Chaucer might
easily have had dealings with such a man and would probably have thought twice
before ridiculing a merchant and then identifying him. Rich and poor, proud and
humble, even the king himself, all felt the power of the men who exploited the wealth
of England, and now indirectly controlled the national purse strings. Merchants in the
later Middle Ages enjoyed a social position which for all that it was tacitly and
sometimes impermanently held, exceeded that of many a noble.”
(Bowden, p. 146)
Chaucer describes the physical attributes first. This man with a forked beard, is dressed in
motley i.e. cloth woven with a figured design and often having many colours. He sits high
and dignified on his horse wearing a beaver hat on his head with his boots clasped neatly. He
is anxious, just as all merchants were, that his trade route, the sea, should be guarded at all
costs. Especially the sea between the two posts of “Middelburgh and Orewelle.” His anxiety
is all the more relevant because at this particular time there was a constant threat of a French
or Flemish invasion.
Defying all civil laws, the Merchant deals in foreign exchange speculation and sells
French ‘sheeldes’ (crowns) for a profit. He quite wittily hides the lamentable fact that he is in
debt so that he can live in luxury instead of paying the creditors. Quite typical again is his
“Chevyssaunce” or lending money for a price. The word however has connotations of
dishonesty attached to it because it had now become a custom that the Merchants would
charge from the borrower, more money than was actually lent. Their argument was of course
valid. Had they invested the same money in a business deal they would have stood to gain
and made a profit. Having lent the money they forego this opportunity of earning some more.
So why should they not charge interest. We as modern readers are quite accustomed to this
system of borrowing and lending on interest, but the fourteenth century condemned it as
usury.

59
Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 270 – 284

berd beard
mottelee Cloth with multi-colored pattern
hye high
Flaundryssh Flemish
bever beaver
clasped buckled
fetisly handsomely
resons opinions
spak spoke
sownynge declaring
Th’encrees of his
The increase of his profits
wynnyng
He wolde the see. . . He wanted that the sea between Middleburg and Orwelle be guarded
Orewelle against pirates at all costs
eschaunge Foreign exchange
Sheeldes French coins
Fulwel his wibisette Used his wit/intelligence very well
Wiste no wight Knew no person
dette debt
estatly dignified
governaunce conduct
bargaynes bargains
chevyssaunce Money lending
sothe truly
seyn say
noot Know not

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4.2.8. The Clerk

Lines 285 – 308

A Clerk ther was of Oxenford also,
That unto logykhaddelong ygo. …
…………………………………………
Sownynge in moral vertu was his speche
And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teach.

4.2.8.1. Detailed Paraphrase

There was also a Clerk from Oxfordwho had begun his study of logic long ago. His horse was
as thin as a rakeand he toowas not very fat I affirm, says the narrator. He looked emaciated
and moreover sober. His short overcoat was very threadbare for he had not yet obtained an
ecclesiastical living, nor was he worldly enough to take up a secular employment. For he
would rather have at the head of his bed, twenty books bound in black or red, of Aristotle and
his philosophy, than having rich clothes or a fiddle or a gay psaltery. Even though he was a
philosopherhe had but little gold in his coffer.Whatever he could get from his friends he spent
it all on books andon learning. He prayed diligently for the souls of those that gave him the
means to attend the schools. He took most care and paid most attention to his studies. He did
not speak one word more than was necessary and that too was said with due respect and
formality and was short and quick and full of high content. His speech was consonant with
moral virtue and he would gladly learn and happily teach.

4.2.8.2. Comment
The Clerk of ‘Oxenford’ is the second ideal portrait after the Knight’s. The term ‘Clerk was
applied to any ecclesiastical student and Chaucer’s Clerk has devoted his time to the study of
‘Logic which was the principal subject in the Arts course at all medieval universities. He is
poor, thread-bare, being thin himself and mounted on a horse who is as thin as a rake. The
reason for his poverty is his inability to have procured a benefice for himself. “The benefice,
as contrasted with a secular post, may be defined as an ecclesiastical living, it demanded that
the recipient be in orders, particularly in English universities, where the impoverished student
was to be maintained by the authorities only until such time as he secured a living.” (Bowden,
p. 155). Moreover, Chaucer’s Clerk is not worldly enough to earn his living through some
secular employment. The last sentence of the portrait does indicate that he takes up teaching
or tutoring to supplement his meagre means. Whatever money he earns or receives as gift, he
spends on books of which he possesses a few:
Twenty bookes, clad in blak or reed,
Of Aristotle and his philosophie, (Lines: 294-5)

61
If you go back to section 1.0 you will remember that books were quite a luxury in fourteenth
century England and were considered to be prized possessions valuable enough to be
bequeathed in wills. Possessing twenty books does make a man rich-but not in material sense.
The Clerk likes to gratify his taste for books and learning rather than spend on “robes riche;
or fithele, or gay sautrie” (296).
Though he was a philosopher he had little gold in his coffer-a pun intended on the word
philosopher. In Chaucer’s time the word philosopher could also be used for an alchemist who
had collectively claimed that they could transform all metals into gold. But certainly our clerk
does not have any gold as his appearance itself suggests. He is a man of few words but
whenever he speaks it is with decorum and reverence. Though his words are short and quick
they are full of meaning “of hy sentence” and “sownynge in moral vertue”. (306-7), The
Clerk is grateful to his friends who lend him money, and in return he prays fervently for their
souls. He is a true scholar, devoted to learning and sacrifices all material pleasures for
knowledge.
Chaucer here gives us an ideal portrait because the facts do not bear out the truth of this
character. Clerks in Chaucer’s time were notorious for their crimes of violence and would
often disturb the peace of their neighbourhood by indulging in fights armed with swords,
bucklers, bows, arrows and other such weapons. There is enough evidence in the records to
prove this. But Chaucer chooses to give us a picture of a true philosopher, a true earnest
scholar. There is not a hint of irony and the poet Chaucer as well as the pilgrim Chaucer, both
approve of him whole-heartedly.

Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 285 – 308

clerk A university student

Oxenford Oxford
logyk logic
Longeygo Long before
leene Lean, thin
Nas right fat Was not very fat
I undertake I swear
holwe hollow
Thertosobrely Also soberly
thredbare frayed
Overestecourtepy Topmost short cloak

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Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 285 – 308

Gettenhym Got him

No benefice No living (from the Church)
To have office To have secular/administrative employment
Was levere Would rather
Beddes heed At the head of the bed
Twenty books would cost a lot and the Clerk would love to possess
Twenty bookes
them than any wealth
Clad in blak or reed Bound in black or red
Aristotle Greek philosopher
fithele fiddle
sautrye Psaltery – a string instrument
Although he was a philosopher he had little gold in his coffer. There is
Al be . . . litel gold a pun here on the word philosopher because philosopher’s stone was
in his cofre believed to turn whatever it touched into gold but our philosopher
possesses no gold at all.
Freendeshente Get from his friends
bisily Diligently, earnestly
Wherewith Wherewithal/ the means
scoleye study
cure care
Night o word Not a word
Moore than was
More than was necessary
neede
seyd said
In forme Due formality/proper manner
In reverence With respect
quyk concise
Ful of hy sentence Full of elevated content or high meaning]
Sownyngein leaning towards

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4.2.9. The Sergeant of the Lawe

Lines 309 – 330

A Sergeant of the Lawe, war and wys
That often hadde been at the Parvys,
…………………………………………
Girt with a ceint of silk, with barres smale;
Of his array telle I no lenger tale.

4.2.9.1. Detailed Paraphrase

A Sergeant of the Law was also there who was wary and prudent and had often been at the
Parvis or the porch of St Paul’s cathedral, very rich in excellence. He was discreet and
dignified– at least he seemed to be so since his words were so wise. He was often a judge in
the local courts, by letter of appointment and with full commission.For his knowledge and his
high renown (reputation), he had many a fees and robes given to him by his clients. There
was nowhere such a great purchaser of land. In fact all wasunrestricted possession to him, his
purchasing could not be invalidated.There was nowhere so busy a man as he and yet he
seemed busier than he was.He knew how to express in legal terms all the cases and decisions
that had occurred since the time of King William (almost three hundred years ago).
Furthermore he knew how to draw up a legal document so that no one could find a flaw in his
writing. He knew every statute by heart. He rode simply in a multi patternedcoat tied with a
belt of silk with small stripes. Chaucer stops here by saying that he can tell us no more about
his clothing.

4.2.9.2. Comment
To understand what is meant by a Sergeant of the Law, we will have to go back to history. To
quote from Bowden once again:
“A man of Law” could be any insignificant lawyer, but a sergeant of the law, was, in
Chaucer’s time and for nearly five hundred years afterwards, one of a superior order
of barristers, men from whom were chosen all the common law judges until 1873. The
title of “sergeant” corresponds to the Latin Serviensadlegam, or “the senier (of the
king) in legal matters. Manly notes that the order of sergeants is of “immemorial
antiquity”; sergeants “ranked socially immediately after knights, bachelors and took
precedence of companions of the Bath, younger sons of knights, and even younger
sons of great nobles.” Sergeants as members of the legal profession “ranked
immediately after the judges of the king’s bench and common pleas, and took
precedence of both the attorney-general and the solicitor general and also barons of
the exchequer, except the chief.” ... Furthermore, sergeants were always men of

64
 wealth, for when a barrister became a sergeant, after a necessary sixteen years as a
barrister, the ceremony of investiture was extremely elaborate and expensive and the
gargantuan feasts always following such ceremonies matched them in splendour and
cost.
(M. Bowden, A Commentary, p. 165-6).
Let us now see whether Chaucer’s Sergeant of the Law measures up to the above sketch or
not. The first two adjectives used for him are ‘war and wys’ i.e. wary and prudent, But this
time Chaucer does not associate prudence or wisdom, with worthiness, as he had done in the
case of the Knight who was wise as well as worthy. Here, the lawyer’s prudence borders
more on cunning. His professional career, which is later described in some detail, bears proof
to the fact
‘Parvys’ or ‘parvis’ has been described as “the enclosed area or court in front of a
building, especially of a cathedral or a church, in some cases surrounded as a cloister with
colonnades or porticoes” as was the parvis of St. Paul’s in London.” (Bowden, p. 166-7).
Chaucer’s Sergeant is seen often at the Parvys, which means that he is probably often seen at
the investiture ceremonies performing the duty of introducing the newly created sergeants.
Therefore, this Sergeant of the Law is important enough to be entrusted with this duty.
The Sergeant is discreet and ‘of great reverence’ (312) but Chaucer checks our responses
here by inserting a qualification: “He semedswich, his wordes woven so wise” (313). Meaning
thereby that his words were so wise that he seemed worthy of reverence, but as far as his
character is concerned, Chaucer chooses not to answer for it. The clever use of the word
‘semed’ at once implies a difference between appearance and reality. Yet his importance is
undiminished. He has been a justice in assizes both by ‘patent’ and by pleyne commission’
(315). A brief explanation is needed here. The assizes were “sessions held periodically in
each country of England for the purpose of administering civil and criminal justice by judges
acting under special commissions. The term “by patente” indicates that the justice ‘in assize”
bore an open letter of appointment from the king, “by pleyn commission” indicates that the
justice bore a letter giving him jurisdiction in all kinds of cases.” (Bowden, p. 167).
Chaucer proceeds to tell us that he fully deserves his eminent position for so far as his
knowledge of the law is concerned there was nobody who could beat him. He knows of all
the cases and judgements right from the time of King William. He knows every statute by
heart and there is not a person on earth who can find faults with his writing. Because of his
vast knowledge and his success in the cases he fights, he is paid handsomely by his clients.
He has often received a full set of clothing (“robes”) as payment for his services. When it
comes to his own purchases and investments, he is so shrewd at it that he can even buy a
piece of land with defective title (“infect”) and quite smoothly by-pass all restrictions and
hold it with a clear title. (in “fee symple”). By buying land he is slowly turning himself into a
landowner. In feudal England it was not easy to buy land since it was often given by the king
for services rendered and could not be bought and sold. The Sergeant however was crafty

65
enough to buy land that was freehold so that it stayed with him and his heirs forever. He can
turn things to his advantage by writing out the documents in a way that nobody can find fault
with them.
Chaucer is impressed by this this learned and efficient lawyer who would be much
sought after for his services. It goes without saying that he must be a very busy man. The
skilful use of the word ‘semed’ points at the ironic undertone of the whole sketch:
Nowher so busy a man as he thernas
And yet he semedbisier than he was. (Lines; 321-2).
In his characteristic ironic manner Chaucer the poet exposes the pretentious nature of this
man who seemed to be busier than he actually was in his pomposity and self-importance.
He is not pompous in his dress though. Chaucer points out that he is dressed... ‘but
hoomly in medlee cote, Girt with a ceint of silk with barres smale’. (328-329).
The silk belt with its pattern of small checks (barres smale’) is a graphic detail and stands
out in the description individualizing the Sergeant.
What is evident from this particular portrait is the constant difference between
appearance and reality, which marks it. Chaucer’s irony here unmasks the Sergeant of the
Law as being a thoroughly materialistic man. Even his success is measured only in material
terms. Therefore every statement is double edged. Outwardly Chaucer is praising this busy
and successful man. He may even have a grudging respect for his experience and his
knowledge and skill. But there is an undercurrent of criticism for this lawyer who has no
moral yardstick for his own character and for whom making money is his top most priority.

Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 309 – 330

War and wys Wary/alert and wise

The porch at St. Paul’s cathedral which was a point of meeting for the
Parvys
lawyers
Greet reverence Great dignity
Semedswich Seemed such
assise Local courts - assizes
By patente By letter of authority from the King
Pleyncommissioun Full jurisdiction
His science His knowledge
Fees and robes Cash and kind

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 Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 309 – 330

purchasour Buyer of land

Al was fee symple All was freehold/unrestricted ownership
bisy busy
caas cases
doomes judgements
Were fall Had occurred
therto moreover
Endite and make a
Draw up a legal document
thyng
No wight No one
Pynche at his
Find a flaw in his writing
writyng
Koude he pleyn by
Knew he completely by heart
rote
hoomly simply
Medlee cote Mutipatterened coat
ceint belt
Barres smale Small stripes

4.2.10. The Franklin

Lines 331 – 360

A Franklin ther was in his compaignye
Whit was his berd as is the dayesye. …
…………………………………………
A shirrevehadde he been, and a contour
Was nowherswich a worthy vavasour. ...

4.2.10.1. Detailed Paraphrase

There was a Franklin in the company of the Sergeant of Law and his beard was as white as is
a daisy. Of his complexion (temperament) he was cheerful.In the morning he loved to have

67
bread dipped in wine. His habitwas always to live happily, for he was the son of (follower of)
Epicuruswho held the opinion that living for pleasure was the path to happiness. He was a
householder and that too a great one. He was St. Julian (patron saint of hospitality) in his
district. His bread, his ale, was always of the same good quality; nowhere was there a man
who was so well stocked with wine.
His house was never without baked pies and the fish and meat was so plentiful that in his
house it snowed with food and drink. Of all the dainty food that men could think about
according to the various seasons of the year, he made for variety in his midday meal and
supper. He had many fat partridges in his coop and many breams and pikes in his fish pond.
His cook was in trouble unless his sauce was hot and spicy and his cooking gear or
equipment was ready. His table was always laid out in the hall and stood ready covered with
a tablecloth.
He presided as lord (Justice of the Peace) at sessions of the country courts and was also
Member of Parliament many times. A dagger and a purse of silk hung from his girdle/belt as
white as morning milk. He had been a sheriff and an auditoror accountant of his shire.
Nowhere was there such a worthy landowner.

4.2.10.2. Comment
‘A Frankeleyn was in his compaignye.’ (331) - begins Chaucer, and the detail which probably
strikes him first of all about this interesting character is recorded first:
Whit was his berd as is a dayesye.
Of his complexioun he was sangwyn; (Lines: 332-33). ·
Imagine a flawlessly white beard around a well-fed, rotund, face! Makes quite an impression,
so does the rest of the description about ‘this fun-loving character who because of his delight
in life is called Epicurus’s own Son. (Epicurus, we are all aware, was a Greek philosopher
who laid down the doctrine that pleasure is the chief good). Chaucer’s use of the word
‘sanguine’ has more implications than we as modern readers can understand. In his times, a
sanguine complexion i.e. a ruddy face, was only a part of the meaning of the whole term. As
Bowden explains: “the medieval physiologist classified human beings according to four
temperaments, determined by the supposed preponderance of one or more fluids (“humours”)
in the individual’s body.” (Bowden, p. 174). The other three rival humours were melancholy,
choleric and phlegmatic. The sanguine complexion meant a combination of the hot and moist
humours and produced a large desire and capacity for all kinds of self-indulgence. The first of
these pleasure -seeking habits is mentioned by Chaucer, when he observes that the Franklin
loves ‘by the morwe a sop in wyn’ (335).
The Franklin’s self-gratification, his love for good wine and food make him a very good
householder. And he is so famous for his hospitality that he is called the “Saint Julian” of his
‘contree.’ (Saint Julian was the Saint of hospitality). His bread, his wine were always of the
best quality, infact, Chaucer, the pilgrim, is so impressed that he says he has never seen a

68
better stocked man. Chaucer clearly admires his organizational skills and also his concern for
quality. His fish ponds are well stocked with fish as well as his pens with fowl that are fatted
properly. His cook too has to work up to certain standards.
The Franklin’s considerable intelligence and skill that goes into maintaining his
household are also evident in the various duties he has taken up and performed well. We are
informed about the position he occupies in his community. Franklins in fourteenth Century
England were wealthy landowners of the gentry class. Chaucer’s Franklin, in addition to
being wealthy, has even held various important public offices. We are given an impressive
list:
At sessiounsther was he lord and sire;
Fuloftetyme he was knyght of the shire. . .
.…………………………………..
A shirrevehaddle he been, and a countour;
Was nowher such a worthy vavasour. (Lines: 355-360)
The narrator seems to be thoroughly impressed by this man who has acted as Justice of the
Peace, has often been a Member of the Parliament, he has even been a sheriff and a pleader in
court (“contour”). All these positions were responsible positions and Chaucer’s Franklin
seems to have fulfilled his responsibilities quite well. He is not only generous and fun loving
but serious and responsible at the same time. Chaucer the narrator, is so overwhelmed that he
describes him in hyperbolic terms and ends the description by observing that ‘was
nowherswich a worthy vavasour’. (360). ‘Vavasour’is a term which was synonymously used
with ‘franklin’ both terms meaning a landowner. Knowing Chaucer’s method of operating
well by now, we should not take this ‘worthiness’ to mean any kind of moral assessment. The
Franklin’s ‘worthiness’ lies in the way he has been successful in life and in his various
offices.
We are told almost nothing of the Franklin’s dress. Probably because he was clad in the
uninteresting ordinary clothes of a country gentleman, but of course, Chaucer’s roving eye
does catch the glint of the “anlaas” and the beauty of the “gipser” both of which hang from
the girdle. The Franklin’s “gipser” or pouch, is of silk and is “whit as more milk” thus
striking against a gown which was probably of a dark shade. The “anlaas” was a large
hunting dagger having a broad blade, sharp at both ends, and tapering to a point. Both these
items mentioned here were worn either by wealthy civilians, or distinguished men of law.
When Chaucer observes that the Franklin has both these items on his person, he is making a
further connection between him and the gentry.
At the end of this description we may feel that for a change Chaucer the poet, has
stopped being critical. Here is a portrait of a genial, hospitable man who shares his table with
everyone. So far so good. But what about the detailed account of the variety of food prepared,
consumed and many times probably thrown away at the house of the Franklin? Chaucer here

69
is obliquely protesting against the sheer wastage implied in the expensive food habits of this
man, detailed for the readers.

Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 331 – 360

Franklins were country gentlemen who were landowners. They were

Frankeleyn free men who held land directly from the King as against the Knights
who were given land for military services rendered to the Crown.
Company. The franklin rides in company with the Sergeant at Law who
compaignye
is a purchaser of land thus another landowner
Whit was his berd White was his beard
dayesye daisy
Temperament. There were four complexions: melancholy, choleric,
phlegmatic and sanguine. These were determined by a combination of
complecioun
‘humours’ (hot, cold, moist and dry coming from the four fluids of the
body phlegm, black bile choler (yellow bile) and blood. In
The sanguine temperament was determined by blood and hence the
sangwyn
ruddy face and the generous and fun loving nature of the Franklin.
By the morwe In the morning
Sop in wyn Bread soaked in wine
delit Delight/pleasure
wone habit
Epicurus Greek philosopherwho advocated a life of pleasure
Verrayfelicitee parfit Truly perfect happiness
greet great
Seint Julian Saint Julian, a legendary saint famous for his hospitality
contree district
breed bread
Always after oon Always of the same (fine) quality
envyned Well stocked with wine
Bake mete Baked pies
Fish and flesssh Fish and meat

70
 Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 331 – 360

Mete and drynke Food and drink

Alledeytees All the delicacies
sondry various
Changed he He made for variety
muwe coop
Breem and manya
Bream and many a pike (both words meaning types of fish)
luce
stuwe Fish pond
Poynaunt tangy
Redy al his geere Ready all his equipment
Table dormant Opened and laid out not folded and stood up against the wall
Redy covered Covered with tablecloth
sessiouns Sessions of the district courts
Knyght of the shire Member of Parliament for the country
anlaas dagger
Gipser purse
Heeng at his girdel Hung at the belt
Whit as morne milk White as morning milk
shrieve sheriff
Contour Auditor or accountant
vavasour landowner

4.2.11. The Five Guildsmen

Lines 361 – 378
An Haberrdasshere and a Carpenter
A webbe, a Dyere, and a Tapycer …
…………………………………………
And goon to vigilies al before
And have a mantel roillicheybore

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4.2.11.1. Detailed Paraphrase
This is the portrait of the five guildsmen who are grouped together by Chaucer. He tells us
that there was a retailer of small goods, a carpenter, a weaver, a dyer and a tapestry maker
and they were all clothed in one kind of livery or uniform which was of a serious
brotherhood. Their gear or equipment was freshly trimmed and their knives were not
mounted with brass but entirely with silver. Their belts and their purses were wrought very
neatly and well. Each of them seems a dependablecitizen to sit on a dais in the guildhall.
Every one of them for the wisdom that he knows was suitable to be an alderman. For they
had enough property and income and also their wives would well agree to it or otherwise
certainly they would be to blame. It is very well to be called ‘madame’ and go before
everyone to feasts on the eve of the guild festivals and have their veil be carried like a queen.

4.2.11.2. Comment
A Haberdasher, a carpenter, a weaver, a Dyer and a Tapestry maker- these five men
belonging to different professions, are collectively, referred to as the five guildsmen. They
are all dressed in one kind of clothes and belong to one “greet fraternitee” (364). A word of
explanation is needed before we go any further. Alfred W. Pollard, in his edition of The
Prologue writes:
The Fraternities or guilds of the fourteenth century were of two kinds, those whose
objects were purely religious and social, and those of which each was restricted to
members of a particular craft or trade, for which they made regulations. These five
pilgrims apparently also belonged to their craftguilds, but as they were of five
different occupations, the fraternity, of which they all wore the living, was obviously
only social and religious.
(A.W. Pollard ed. The Prologue, Macmillan and Company, London, 1962).
Thus these five men, probably belonging to the same parish, therefore wearing the same
livery, provide an opportunity for mentioning the various different areas which the rising
middle-classes were taking up as profession. The Haberdasher, originally meaning a cloth-
merchant, dealt in other different kinds of goods, eg. hats, ribbons, spectacles, caps, threads,
pins etc. The carpenter, the weaver, the dyer and the tapestry maker all have their profession
described in the name itself. One important fact that the pilgrim Chaucer notes about these
guildsmen, is their show of wealth. Not only are their clothes fresh and new and adorned with
some kind of decoration, but more importantly, their knives were mounted not with brass but
silver:
HirKnyves were chapednoght with bras,
But al with silver, wroghtfulclene and weel. (Lines: 366-67)
You may recall that in section 1.5 the important relevance of the above statement has already
been discussed. The sumptuary laws were laws that were formulated to control the excesses
in diet and apparel in Chaucer’s time and these laws in forbade any tradesmen or mechanics
72
to carry silver-mounted knives. Hence Chaucer’s guildsmen are breaking a law as well as
flaunting their wealth by having their knives tipped with silver. The rest of their description
only emphasises their riches:
Welsemedech of hem a fair burgess
To sitten in a yeldehalle, on a deys.
Everich for the wisdom that he kan
Was shaply for to been an alderman, (Lines: 369-372)
Chaucer the pilgrim here makes a tall claim for these five guildsmen. He finds each of them
worthy to sit on a dais in a guild hall, thereby implying that they are all fit to be the Mayor or
the Alderman as these were the only people who sat on the dais. The point is re-emphasized
in line 371-2 and the reason given is their knowledge and wisdom. If these are not enough for
a claim to a political office then the subsequent lines inform us that they possess the
necessary property and income:
For catelhadde they ynogh and rente (Line: 373).
The four concluding lines of this group character sketch are surprisingly concerned with the
wives of these five guildsmen. It is amusing to note that Chaucer here paints a true picture of
the social-climbers in any age, at any time, at any place. First of all he says that the wives
would readily agree with him when he claims that these five men are worthy of a high
political office. If they fail to do so then they are certainly to be blamed. They find it
delightful to be addressed as ‘Madame’ and love to go to the guild festivals (‘vigilies’) where
they precede everyone else and make a royal entrance by having their mantel carried for
them. Pretentious and affected, these ladies are aspiring for a much higher place in the social
ladder than the one that fourteenth century society intended for them.The satire though mild
is unmistakably present. We knowonly too well that such social climbers can be found in any
place at any point in time. The external trappings may differ but theneed to boast about their
riches and their social position remains the same. Such perceptions into human nature make
for Chaucer’s perennial appeal.

Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 361 – 378

haberdasher Cloth merchant or retailer of sewing materials or hats and ribbons

Alle in o lyveree All in one uniform
Great fraternity. The fraternity here is social or religious because
Greet fraternitee professionally they do not belong to the same guild. In other words
they are from different professions.
Gere apiked Equipment trimmed

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 Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 361 – 378

Chapednoght with Not trimmed with brass but with silver. This is a sign of their social
bras. . . . silver status due to their newly acquired wealth.
everydeel Every bit
Fair burgeys Good citizen
yeldehalle guildhall
On a deys dais
everich everyone
kan knows
Was shaply Was suitable
Was shapely . . .
They were fit enough to be an alderman or the head of a guild
been an alderman
For catelhadde . .
For they had enough property and income
.rente
Welassente Well agree
ycleped Be called
vigilies Ceremonies held on the eve of feast days
Al bifore Before everyone
mantel The long veil or train of the gown
roialliche royally
ybore carried

4.2.12. The Cook

Lines 379 – 387

A Cook they had with them for the nones
To boil the chiknes with the marybones. …
…………………………………………
That on his shyne a mormalhadde he.
Or blankmanger, that ade he with the beste.

74
4.2.12.1. Detailed Paraphrase
The Guildsmen have a Cook with them for the occasion, to boil the chickens with their
marrow bones, and tart flavouring powder and spices. He knew well how to judge a draught
of London ale and he also knew how to roast and boil and broil and fry, make a stew and
bake a pie. But it seemed to me says the narrator, that it was a great harm that he had an open
sore on his shin. But as far as white pudding goes, he made it the best.

4.2.12.2. Comment
The Cook forms a part of the group of the Five Guildsmen, but interestingly he is singled out
and described as an individual. It is another sign of affectation on the part of the Guildsmen,
to have a Cook with them:
To boille the chiknes with the marybones,
And poudre-merchant tastgalyngdale. (Lines: 380--81)
By any standards, the Cook is good at his job. He can recognize a draught of London ale
which was famous by Chaucer’s time. He could roast and boil and broil and fry and could
make a good stew (“montreux”) as well as bake a pie.
So far, the only disqualifying comment is in the hint that the Cook is probably a strong
drinker as he is said to be familiar with London ale- the most potent of the prevalent alcoholic
beverages. But what follows after this description further disparages the Cook’s character
though only by implication. The pilgrim Chaucer, who is obviously impressed by the Cook’s
skill in the culinary art, feels it to be a pity that such a good Cook should have a ‘mormal’ a
running sore on his shin:
But greet harm was it, as it thoughte me,
That on his shyne a mormalhadde he. (Lines: 385-86).
To understand the wider implications of this observation one needs to go back to an
explanation of the word ‘mormal’. According to Professor Curry this ulcer is to be identified
with Malum mortuum of the medieval medical treatise. The causes of this disease are
summed up thus: ‘uncleanly personal habit” “the eating of melancholic foods and the
drinking of strong wines,” and “disgraceful association with diseased and filthy women”
(Bowden, A Commentary, p. 185-86) Thus what may appear to be a casual observation at first
sight, is in fact a devastatingly revealing statement which exposes the Cook to be an
unpleasant character. Yet Chaucer ends the sketch by reminding us once again of his skill at
his profession:
For blankmanger, that mad he with the beste, (Lines: 387).
By now the memory of that ugly sore on the Cook’s shin is too strong to be replaced by this
description of the blancmange pudding which seems to be the Cook’s speciality.It is
Chaucer’s skilful art of characterization that has exposed the Cook’s moral propensities
through just one observation.

75
 Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 379 – 387

For the nones For the occasion

chiknes chickens
marybones marrowbones
Poudre-marchant Flavouring powders or mixture of spices
tart sharp
galyngale Similar to ginger
knowe Recognize
Rooste roast
sethe boil
broille broil
frye fry
Makenmortreux Make stew
pye pie
shyne shin
mormal Open or running sore
blankmanger blancmange pudding
beste Best quality

4.2.13. The Shipman

Lines 388 – 410

A Shipman was ther, wonynefer by weste;
For aught I woot, he was of Dertemouthe. …
…………………………………………
And every cryke in Britaigne and in Spayne.
His barge ycleped was the Maudelayne.

4.2.13.1. Detailed Paraphrase

A Shipman was there dwelling far in the West; for all I know, says the narrator, he was from
Dartmouth. He rode upon a carthorse as best as he could in a gown of woollen cloth that

76
reached to the knee. He had a dagger hanging on a cord which went about his neck and down
under his arm. The hot summer had made his hue all brown and certainly he was a good
fellow. He had drawn many a draft of wine while coming from Bordeaux while the merchant
slept. He cared little for a clear conscience. If he fought and had the upper hand (with pirates)
then he sent his prisonershome by water to every country. But to talk of his skill – he could
reckon well orknew well his tides, his currents, and all the dangers around him. He knew well
his harbours and the positions of the moon and his navigationand Chaucer the narrator says
that there was no one like him from Hull to Cartagena. He was strong and prudent in taking
risks; His beard had been shaken by many a storms. He knew all the harbours as they were
from Gotland to the cape of Finistree, and every stream in Brittany and in Spain. His ship
was called the Maudelayne.

4.2.13.2. Comment
The presence of a Shipman in this group is quite significant because he is a representative of
that class of English society which had made England a known and feared rival contender for
trade by sea. Since the reign of Edward III, England had never ceased to use the sea as a
trade-route to foreign countries. But the life of these sea merchants was one of hardihood and
daring. Piracy was common on the sea and at any time any foreign merchant vessel could
suddenly choose to adopt piratical means. Therefore an armed sea-merchant was a common
sight to contemporary public. Chaucer’s rough and tough Shipman is a typical representative
of his class.
Chaucer tells us that his Shipman certainly hails from the West and probably from
Dartmouth. The detail individualizes him but at the same time has been included for a
specific reason. As Bowden explains “The men of Dartmouth, besides holding from the king
a blanket privateering commission, took the lead as freebooters, and were known as such
throughout England.” (Bowden, p. 193).
The Shipman rides as well as he could on a “rouncy” i.e. a clumsy, heavy footed horse
and a sailor on horseback could be quite an amusing sight as he is not familiar with riding
techniques. He is dressed in a short gown of a coarse woollen cloth (“faldyng”); he wears a
dagger hanging on a cord (‘Laas’) across his chest ‘about his nekke, under his arm adown’ (l.
393); as for his skin, it has been scorched brown because of the hot summer sun. From his
looks the narrator at once arrives at the conclusion that “certainly he was a good felawe.”
(395). This observation is very interestingly placed right in the middle of the sketch. So,
while it forms a conclusion to the Shipman’s physical description, at the same time it is a
prelude to the immoral activities of the man whose account soon follows. Therefore we are
left in no doubt at all that the so called ‘goodness’ of the Shipman is questionable.
The Shipman is not at all averse to pilfering and indulging in petty robberies whenever
he gets a chance. The wine of Bordeux seems to be his weakness for if he has a cargo of it on
board he helps himself while the merchant sleeps. His sins do not end here. Chaucer tells us
about the man-slaughter he indulges in:

77
 If that he faught, and hadde the hyer hand
By water he senle hem hoom lo every lond. (Lines: 399-400)
Thus if he has an upper hand in a fight then whoever is taken prisoner is sent down to a
watery grave.
The Shipman may be a rogue but he knows his craft well. What Chaucer admires most in
this character is his skill at his profession. The description that follows now eulogises his
efficiency as a very able sea-captain. There is no doubt that he is good at his job. He knows
well how to reckon tides; he is familiar with all the streams, currents and other dangers which
can cause him harm; he knows all the ports, he can navigate well even by the moon and he is
a master at pilotage. Infact the narrator has not seen another Shipman like him from Hulle to
Carthage. He was hardy as his profession required him to be and also wise enough to
undertake many dangerous trips for his beard had been shaken by many a tempest. He is so
experienced that he feels at home in all the harbours be it Gotland, Cape Finistree, or the
small inlets (‘crykes’) of Brittany and Spain. Chaucer gives a last individualizing touch when
he tells us that this brave Shipman’s barge was called ‘Maudelayne’. Records prove the
existence of this name, in the fourteenth century.

Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 388 – 410

wonynge dwelling
Fer by weste Far in the West
woot know
rouncy carthorse
faldyng Coarse woolen cloth
laas cord
adoun down
Hootesomer Hot summer
hewe colour
broun brown
felawe companion
Ful many . . . This could mean either that he had carried wine as cargo in his ship or
ydrawe that he had stolen wine while the merchant slept.
chapman merchant
Nyce conscience Clear conscience

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 Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 388 – 410

Hyerhond Higher hand

By water . . . lond He sent them to a watery grave; he drowned them
craft skill
herbrewe harbour
moone moon
lodemenage Navigation, pilotage
Noon swich None such
berd beard
Alle the havenes All the harbours
cryke Creek or inlet
barge Ship
ycleped Was called

4.2.14. The Doctor of Physik

Lines 411 – 444

With us ther was a Doctour of Phisik;
In al this world ne was ther noon hymlik, …
…………………………………………
For gold in phisik is a cordial,
Therefore he lovede gold in special.

4.2.14.1. Detailed Paraphrase

With us, says Chaucer the narrator, there was a Doctor of Medicine and in all this world there
was none like himwho could speak of medicine and of surgery. For he was well versed in
astronomy. He watched over his patients very many times to find out the astronomically
suitable hours for them by use of hisscientific and astrological knowledge. He knew well how
to calculate the favourable planetary position for his talismans to work on his patients. He
knew the cause ofevery malady, whether it was hot or cold or moist or dry and where it was
generated and of which humour. He was a very perfect practitioner. As soon as he knew the
cause and the root or source of his patient’s sickness, he straightaway gave him his remedy.

79
He had his apothecaries ready to send him drugs and his syrups, for each of them made the
other profit – their friendship was not new or recently begun.
The Doctor knew well his Esculapius and Dioscorides and also Rufus, old Hippocrates,
Haly and Galen, Serapion, Rhazes and Avicenna, Averroes, John the Damascan and
Constantine, Bernard and Gatesden and Gilbertyn. Of his diet he was moderate and it was
never in excess but greatly nourishing and digestible. His study of the bible was very little.
He was clothed in red and blue, lined with taffeta and with silk; and yet he was judicious in
spending. He kept what he earned in the time of plague. Since gold in medicine is good for
the heart therefore he loved gold in special.
4.2.14.2. Comment
Chaucer begins this portrait by making an exaggerated claim for the Physician and calling
him unparalleled:
In all this world ne was ther noon hymlik
To speak of phisik and of surgery: (Lines: 412 - 413)
Modern readers might wonder what is the connection between ‘phisik and surgerye’ and
‘astronomye’ in which this doctor is well grounded? To understand their relevance we will
have to take a look at medieval medicine which was still in its infancy. A qualified Doctor
even in medieval England had to study medicine for almost about six to seven years before he
could be called a Doctor. The courses of study were wide and there were various known
authorities for it. Chaucer gives us a long list of all medical authorities of his time thus
displaying his awareness about it too. He takes one name after another. Chaucer the narrator
might have found out about these names from the Doctor but it is Chaucer the poet who is
putting his knowledge to good use here. Esculapies, Deyscorides, Rufus, Yporas, Haly,
Galyen, Serapion, Razis and Avycen. Averrois, Damascicn and Constantym, Bemard,
Galesden and Gilbertynhave all been studied by the Doctor. Apart from knowledge about
these authorities, medieval medicine laid importance even on the science of Astronomy and
its relevance to medicine. As Bowden explains: “Astronomy in the Middle Ages included the
study not only of the nature and motions of heavenly bodies, but also of what we now term as
“astrology.” The key to man’s physical well-being was thought to be contained in the
mysteries of Science and it was essential for a competent physician to know how to bring
about the proper coincidence of treatment with favourable aspects of the stars and planets.”
(Bowden, p. 203).
Chaucer’s Physician therefore seems to be an admirably erudite man and treats his patients
with his combined knowledge of the various sciences. We are given a description:
He kepte his pacient a ful greet deel
In houres, by his magyknatureel.
Welkoude he fortunen the ascendent

80
 of his ymager for his pacient. (Lines: 415-18)
Natural magic was the science of astrology which worked by an observation of the heavenly
bodies, as opposed to black magic which dealt with spirits. The Physician uses his natural
magic to determine the exact time when the stars would be in a favourable position for him to
apply his remedies. To do this he has to keep a constant watch over his patient. In addition to
this he was even skilful in making talismans for his patients, at the exact times when they
would be most efficacious. Bowden summarises Professor Curry’s explanation of this art:
“....it was believed that all material objects fashioned by man received the impress of
the constellation reigning at their completion, and that the impress remained with an
object until the object was destroyed; astrological images, if formed in the right way
at the right moment, were thought to be especially imbued with the powers of the
stars, and so, applied to the sick could be used to strengthen and weaken respectively
favourable and unfavourable celestial influences.... These images were round discs, as
a rule, made of some such metal as copper or in or silver or gold; on one face was
engraved the pictorial representation of the sign selected (for instance, if Libra were
the proper sign, a balance would be pictured) as well as magic formula sentences from
the Bible, names of other zodiacal signs, and so on, which would be engraved on the
other face - all depending upon the erudition and skill of the maker of the image. To
“fortunen the ascendent,” or horoscope of an image means, then, “that the dealer in
natural magic must fortune (i.e. place in a favourable position) both Luna and the lord
of the ascendant, and infortune (place in unfavourable positions) the Lord of the house
of death and the malefic planets.” The ‘placing’ constituted the engraving of the
image.
(Bowden, A Commentary, P. (206).
Chaucer’s Doctor of Physic is therefore a man of immense learning and skill having a
thorough knowledge of the various areas of medicine. We are told that he can tell the cause of
every illness, whether it was due to a hot humour or cold, moist or dry. Knowing the cause of
the disease and the roots of it too, he would then give the sick man his remedy. The narrator,
quite impressed by this successful doctor, calls him a “verray parfit praktisour” (422). You
may recall that Chaucer had described the Knight in an exactly similar phrase, but there was
not even a slight hint of any irony then. In the Physician’s portrait however he gives it a
considerable satiric tilt. In between the long list of the Physician’s impressive qualifications,
the poet inserts four lines which expose the man to be a thorough materialist, one who has
made a business out of a profession which should have been based only on a desire to serve.
The Doctor has an understanding with his chosen apothecaries (the modern day chemists), to
send him the drugs he prescribed:
Fulredyhadde he his apotehcaries
To sende him drogges and his letuaries. (425-26)
To drive his point home, Chaucer is more explicit in the next line:

81
 For ech of hem made oother for to wynne;
Hirfrendshipenas not newe to bigynne. (Lines: 427-28).
The Doctor and the apothecaries, thus help each other to profit from the patient’s illness and
this has been going on for quite some time because as the poet says, their friendship is not
new.
Chaucer next comments on the diet of the Physician and finds it balanced, nourishing
and digestible and not superfluous like that of the Franklin. Details are not given however.
Another ironic touch is felt when we are told this immensely learned man knows ‘but litel on
the Bible’ (437), implying thereby that he was probably, like other physicians of the time, not
a believer in God.
From what is described of his dress, the Physician seems a wealthy and fashionable man.
He is dressed, from head to toe, in a rich cloth of red and blue colour. His robe is lined with
taffeta and fine silk (‘Sendal’). For all his expensive tastes, the Doctor is not a spendthrift and
keeps safe all the profits that he makes in the time of diseases and epidemics. With a stroke of
genius, Chaucer puns on the Physician’s love for gold:
For gold in phisik is a cordial
Therefore he lovede gold in special. (Lines: 443-44)
The medicinal properties of gold had made it an invaluable material in ‘phisik’, therefore
says Chaucer, it is natural that a ‘doctor of phisik’ should love gold. We as readers are by
now intelligent enough, not to take the statement at face value. The greed and avariciousness
of this character stands exposed.

Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 411 – 444

Phisik medicine
Noon hymlik None like him
Speke of Speak of
astronomy astrology
Kepte his pacient Watched over his patient
Ful greet deel Many times
In those hours when the planetary influence would work in favour of
In houres
his patient
Natural magic (astrology) as against black magic which dealt with
Magyknatureel
spirits
Fortunen the The Doctor would make his talismans at a time when the conjunction

82
Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 411 – 444

ascendent of the planets would be astrologically in favour of his patient and he

would keep the patient’s dominant planet also in a favourable position
Ymages talismans
Everichmaladye Every sickness or disease
This relates to the theory of humours. The four humours that
determined the temperament of a person were hot, cold, moist and dry .
These were a combination of four elements earth, air, fire and water.
Hoot . . . drye The temperaments they produced were melancholy, choleric,
phlegmatic and sanguine and were linked to the four body fluids i.e.
blood(air), Choler or yellow bile (fire), phlegm (water) and black bile
(earth).A balance of these humours was essential for good health.
engendered generated
humour The four humours explained above
Parfit practisour Perfect practitioner
yknowe known
Of his harm the
The sourse of his patient’s harm
roote
boote remedy
apothecaries druggists
drogges drugs
letuaries syrups
Esculapius Aesculapius also known as the father of medicine in Greek mythology
Dioscurides, a Greek physician and author of the Materia Medica a
Deyscorides
book about medicinal plants.
Wrote in the second century and named the various parts of the human
Rufus
body
Hippocrates, the founder of Greek medical science, flourished in the 5th
Ypocras
century B C. The
Haly Persian
Wrote in the second century about his idea of the four elements and the
Galen
four humours

83
Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 411 – 444

Arabian medical writer of the 11th century who wrote on herbal

Serapion
medicine
Razis Rhazes of Baghdad from the end of the 9th century
Avicenna or Ibn Sina, of Bokhara, a renowned Arabian philosopher
Avicen
and physician
Averrois Averros, another Arabian authority on medicine
this was a name attached to the writings of two authors – a Christian
Damascien
and an Arab medical authorities of the 9th century.
He was a monk who brought Arabian learning to Salerno in the 11th
Constantyn
century
Bernard Bernard Gordon, a 14th century Scot professor of medicine
John Gaddesdon, a physician from 14th century, author of Rosa
Gatesdyn
Medicinae and doctor to King Edward II.
GilbertusAnglicanuslived in the 13th century. Known for his work
Gilbertyn TheCompendium of Medicinethat gave a comprehensive view of the
best practices in medicine and surgery at the time.
diete diet
superfluitee excess
norissyng nourishing
Knew little about the Bible. Doctors were often considered to be
Litel on the Bible
atheists
Sangwyn and in pers Red and blue
taffata taffeta
sendal silk
Esy of dispence Moderate in his expenditure
Wan in pestilence Won in the time of plague.
Cordial curative
In special In particular

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4.2.15. The Wife of Bath

Lines 445 – 476

A good Wif was ther of biside Bathe,
But she was somdeldeef, and that was scathe …
…………………………………………
Of remedies of love she knew per chaunce,
For she koude of that art the oldedaunce.

4.2.15.1. Detailed Paraphrase

There was a good Wife of Bath, tells the narrator, but it was a pity that she was alittle deaf.
She was however skilled in cloth making in which she surpassed everyone from Ypres to
Ghent. In the entire parish there was no wife who could go to the Offering before her, and if
anyone did then certainly the Wife would be so angry that she forgot all about being
charitable. Her kerchiefs that she wore upon her head were very fine in texture and I dare
swear, observes the narrator, that they weighed ten pounds.Her stockings were of fine scarlet
red, tied closely and her shoes were soft and new. Her face was bold and fair and red in hue.
All her life she had been a worthy woman and had been married five times. This is not
counting the other company that she had kept in her youth. But there is no need to speak of
that now, says the narrator.
Thrice the Wife had been to Jerusalem and had passed many a strange and foreign seas.
She had been to Rome and Boloigne, in Galicia at St James and at Cologne. She knew much
about wandering by the way. She was gap-toothed, truly to say. She sat easily upon an ambler
(a pacing horse), wearing a large wimple (veil), and a hat as broad as is a shield. She wore an
overskirt about her large hips and a pair of spurs on her feet. In fellowship she knew well
how to laugh and chatter. She knew about the remedies of love, as it happened for she knew
the tricks of the trade (from experience).

4.2.15.2. Comment
When Chaucer introduces the Wife of Bath, he introduces her as a Wife rather than as a
professional cloth maker. For all other pilgrims Chaucer had begun their portraits by first
mentioning their profession, so we have “A knight ther was...’ ‘Ther was a Nunne, a
Prioress...’ or ‘A Monk ther was...’ or ‘Ther was a Doctor of Phisik...’ and so on. With the
Wife of Bath, however, he chooses to place an emphasis on her status as a wife (even though
at the time she is a widow) but makes her status as a cloth maker secondary to her marital
status. Of course she is a much-married women, we are told, already married five times and
now is on the lookout for a sixth husband. Is Chaucer then trying to say that ‘marriage’ and
not cloth-making is the profession of this ‘loud’ woman? May be so, but there could be
another reason for this too. The theme of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue as well as her Tale is

85
also Marriage and so the emphasis we find in the portrait is carried over into the Tale and
thus the tale and the teller are linked.
In a company of thirty pilgrims there are just two more women beside the Wife of Bath.
Both these women are from the Church, the convent to be more precise. One is the Prioress
who fits the bill for a heroine of any conventional romance, being beautiful and sophisticated
and the other who is also a nun is merely mentioned and not described. The Wife of Bath or
Dame Alison, is poles apart from the delicate feminine attributes of the Prioress. Rather than
being a beautiful and sophisticated figure like the Prioress, the Wife of Bath is a coarse and
ostentatious figure modelled more on the lines of a female figure from a fabliau. She barges
into this group of almost entirely male pilgrims, refusing to be dictated to by any
conventional standards of good moral and social behaviour and also refuses to be the
custodian of any conventional feminine virtues. Rather than being submissive and demure
she is boldly assertive and flashy in her dress and acknowledges with an effrontery her liking
for the physical pleasures of life.
This female cloth maker from Bath has the misfortune of being a little bit deaf, and this
is the first observation made by the narrator immediately individualizing her. Her portrait
reveals her to be a forthright woman, with a great sense of humour, full of warmth, is
friendly, though with a little want of decorum, a little lack of restraint. But on the whole a
lively and amusing character who makes an unforgettable impression on our minds. Let us
see how the poet goes about this particular sketch.
The good Wife is generally assumed to be from Bath, but Chaucer is less specific as he
places her not exactly in Bath but ‘biside’ or somewhere near it. She is so good at cloth
making that she even surpasses the expertise of the well-known weavers of ‘Ypres’ and
‘Gaunt’. Of course you should be careful to note the subtle irony in this exaggerated praise.
The poet is telling us that this is how the Wife values her own skill. So forceful is her
personality that she makes her presence felt:
In al the parisshewif ne was thernoon
That to the offryngebifore hire sholde goon;
And if therdide, certeyn so wrooth was she,
That she was out of allecharitee (Lines: 449 – 52).
The order of precedence in making the offering at church was of considerable importance in
the Middle Ages. The Wife of Bath is therefore very particular about not being preceded in
this matter, and if any other good wife dares to go before her, it would make her so angry that
she would then be out of all charity. Once again this is a tongue in cheek remark from the
poet, commenting on how the church was treated by these people. Religion or devotion was
far from their mind when they attended the church.
As befits a woman of her standing, the Wife is dressed lavishly. Her ‘coverchiefs’ or
headcovers are so elaborate and heavy that the narrator is sure that they weigh ten pounds.

86
She wears these particularly on Sundays. Her ‘hosen’ or stocking are of a fine scarlet red
colour and always tightly drawn not lose and hanging, and her shoes are soft and new. She
has a bold look on her face and is of fair complexion with a red tinge to it. Once again there is
a qualified use of the word ‘worthy’ because while the poet calls her so, he startles us in the
next line by telling us about her marital and extra marital adventures. To begin with she has
had five husbands and is now on the lookout for a sixth, not counting the other company she
has had in her youth. But now is not the time to recount all this, and so saying the poet
switches over to other matters:
She was a worthy woman al hirlyve,
Housebondes at chirchedore she haddefyve,
Withoutenoothercompaignye in youthe
But ther-of nedethnat to speke as mowthe, (Lines: 459 – 462).
One wonders if there can be any connection between the Wife’s worthiness and the number
of husbands that she has had? Certainly the word ‘worthy’ in this context does not carry any
moral connotations.
We are next told of her love for travelling in gay company and are given a long list of the
various places she has been to. Thrice she has visited Jerusalem and has crossed many a
strange streams. She has been to Rome, Boloigne; she has visited the great altar of St. James
in Spain and has been to Cologne probably to visit the tomb of the Magi. There is perhaps no
exaggeration when Chaucer tells us that the Wife knows a good deal about ‘Wandrynge by
the weye’ (467). What is interesting, however, is the way Chaucer links up the fact of the
Wife being ‘gat toothed’ with her accounts of travelling. This particular physical
characteristic had many associations for the Middle Ages and it could be interpreted in
several ways. Such women were thought to be variously passionate, envious, rich, luxurious,
bold, faithless, deceitful, suspicious, and in addition to all this Chaucer interprets it as a sign
of much travel. But the Wife’s character bears out some of the other interpretations also as
we have already seen. She is rich, successful, bold, amorous, must be passionate too, is
envious and could have been suspicious of her various husbands.
The Wife rides comfortably on an ambler i.e. an easy paced horse and is covered up to
the neck with a wimple. On her head she wears a broad hat which is amusingly likened to a
buckler or a small shield. She also wears a foot mantle or an outer skirt, around her ample
hips. Her feet are clasped in a pair of sharp spurs. The portrait ends with a general comment
on her character:
In feloweshipswelkoude she laughe and carpe;
Of remedies of love she knew per chaunce,
For she koude of that art the olde dance. (Lines: 474-76)

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Being thus able to laugh and sing with her companions, she must surely have proved to be an
interesting, amusing company. Being an old hand at the game of love, she is quite adept at
knowing all the various remedies for this illness, which afflicts all mankind.
You must notice that though the Wife of Bath has been to many pilgrimages, and is
going to another one on this journey Chaucer never once gives any indication of her being
pious or devout. Her love for life, her love for physical pleasures is what is emphasized
throughout.
Her deafness will be linked later to an incident in her life when she recounts how she
came to losing her hearing in one ear. She was hit by her fourth husband when she snatched a
book he was reading about the sinfulness of women. At the same time her deafness has also
been seen to be symbolic of a refusal to accept the conventional interpretation of the
scriptures and rather make a selective choice from them to support her own theories about
marriage and sex in her Prologue to her tale. Her own interpretations of the scriptures run
counter to those provided by the Church Fathers. The latter most surely and quite
understandably carry the stamp of the patriarchal point of view and are almost always critical
and dismissive where women are concerned.

Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 445– 476

Biside Bathe Somewhere near Bath

Somdeldeef A little deaf
Was scathe It was apity
Cloothmakyng Cloth making
Haddeswich an
Had such a skill
haunt
Ypres and Ghent, both places in Flanders and known for their skillful
Ypres and Gaunt
weavers.
Was ther noon There was none
Offertory – that part of the Mass when people offer gifts or make their
‘offerings’. These days money is offered but in medieval times people
Offrynge
often offered things of their own manufacturing. They go to the altar in
order of social precedence.
before hire Before her, precede her
Sholde goon Should go
So wroth was she She was so angry

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Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 445– 476

Out of allecharitee Beyond any thoughts of being charitable.

coverchiefs scarves
Fulfyne Very fine
Weren of ground textured
Dorste swear Dare swear
weyeden weighed
heed head
hosen stockings
Fulstreiteytyed Tightly laced up or tied
Moyste Moist, supple
Reed of hewe Red of hue
At chirchedore In front of the church door where all marriages took place.
nowthe Right now
Straungestrem Foreign seas
muchel much
Gat-toothed Gap-toothed
Soothly for to say Truly to say
Amblere Amler, an easy paced horse
ywympled Wimple or chin band was tied well
Bokeler or a targe shield
Foot-mantel Outer skirt
Spores spurs
Carpe chatter
Per chaunce As it happened
Koude knew
Olde daunce Old dance (tricks of the trade)

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4.2.16. The Parson

Lines 477 – 528

A good man was ther of religioun
And was a povre Person of a toun, …
…………………………………………
But Cristes lore and his apostles twelve
He taught; but first he folwed it hymselve.

4.2.16.1. Detailed Paraphrase

A good man was there of religion, and he was a poor Parson of a town, but he was rich in
holy thought and work, observes the narrator. He was a learned man, a scholar who would
truly preach Christ’s gospel and would devoutly teach his parishioners, continues the
narrator. He was benign, and wonderfully diligent and very patient in times of adversity, and
this had been proven many times. He was unwilling to’ curse’ (excommunicate) people for
non-payment of his tithes. There is no doubt that he would rather givesome of his offering
and income to his poor parishioners.He knew how to find sufficiency in little or few things.
His parish was wide and houses were far apart but he did not leave visiting his parishioners in
sickness or in trouble, even those living farthest away in his parish, both highand low in
social ranking. With a staff in his hand and going by foot he set a noble example to his sheep
(parishioners), that first he wrought (practised) and only afterwards he taught. He took out
those words out of the gospel and added a metaphor to them, that if gold rusts then what will
iron do? For, if a priest, on whom men place their trust, be foul (corrupt) then it is no wonder
that a layman or an ordinary person would rust or go the wrong way. And it would certainly
be a shame if the shepherd is dirty while the sheep (parishioners) is clean. A priest ought to
set an example by his purity and show how his sheep (parishioners) should live.
The good Parson says the narrator, did not give his benefice on rent to leave his
parishioners stuck in the swamp and run off to London to Saint Paul’s to seek an appointment
as a chantry priest or to be hired by a guild. Rather, he stayed at home and took care of his
parishioners so that thewolf would not carry them away (so that they may not be led into sin).
He was a shepherd and not a mercenary. Though he was holy and virtuous he did not despise
sinful men, nor was he haughty or disdainful towards them in his speech. In his teaching he
was discreet and benign. It was his constant aim to draw folks to heaven by fairness, by
setting a good example.If, however, a person was obstinate, whoever he was, of high rank or
low, he would snub him sharply for that reason. There was nowhere a better priest than him,
says the narrator. He did not wait for or expect any pomp or reverence, nor made himself
excessivelymeticulous about conscience. He taught Christ’s teachings and about the twelve
Apostles but first whatever he taught he followed it himself.

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4.2.16.2. Comment
This poor parish priest is an idealized figure whose portrait, like that of the Knight is devoid
of any satire or criticism. He is a good man of religion and though not rich in the worldly
sense he is rich in holy thoughts and work. He is also a learned man, a clerk meaning that he
has been to the university. In true spirit he preaches the Christ’s gospel and devoutly teaches
his parishioners.Chaucer describes him in terms of his virtues. The Biblical image of the
priest being a good shepherd who would lead his sheep by setting a good example is adhered
to in the entire portrait. We are not told at all about his appearance or dress because for him it
did not matter and probably the narrator is so much in awe of the virtuous man that for him
too external trappings become irrelevant.
The poet Chaucer, chooses such details that make the emphasis in this portrait fall on
things that the Parson did not do as compared to the other ecclesiastical characters like the
Monk, the Prioress and the Friar. These three characters, despite being connected directly to
the church are worldly to the core. Not so the Parson. He is neither after comfort nor after
money or other materialistic gains. For example, unlike other churchmen he would never
leave his parishioners and go chant prayers in London for a patron just to make some extra
money. He sets an example rather of frugal and clean living. He is an unusual man of virtue,
such whose like is not commonly seen. He is benign and wonderfully hardworking; lets
nothing stop him from fulfilling his duty; is patient in times of adversity and he hates to curse
those who were unable to pay the tithes i.e. the ten per cent income tax which every
parishioner was expected to pay. He is indeed an exceptional priest of his times. Instead of
claiming from his poor parishioners, he would gladlygive them whatever offerings he
received or whatever ‘substance’ he had because for himself he required very little: ‘He
koude in litelthyng have suffisaunce.’ (Line: 490).
The narrator’s expectation is that such a thoroughly holy and virtuous man would be
contemptuous of the sinners. But it is not so at all. This Parson is not scornful of the sinful
man, nor is he unreasonably severe in his admonitions. Instead, he is discreet and benign in
his teaching and because of his fair treatment folks are inadvertently drawn towards him. If,
however, there was any obstinate man, whether he be rich or poor, he snubbed him sharply,
regardless of his status in society. Thus he is an exception in treating all men as equals and
making no distinction between the rich and the poor. We can believe the narrator when he
says that he had never seen a better priest. The catalogue of virtues is not over yet. The
Parson believes in practical teaching. And never runs after pomp or reverence, nor is he
bothered about fine theological issues which might make him lose sight of important
fundamentals. He is a true Christian and gladly teaches Christs’ love and the twelve apostles
but it is re-emphasized that he first followed himself whatever he taught.
Chaucer the narrator almost revers this virtuous priest and Chaucer the poet gives us an
ideal portrait of what a man of the Church should be like. There are enough rogues in this
gallery who have been used by the poet to expose the corruption in the Church. The Parson
stands in sharp contrast to all these figures showing the way things ought to be and can be.

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WhenChaucer the narrator sums up by saying ‘a better preest I trowe that nowher noon ys’ (
Line:524), there is absolutely no satire on the poet’s part.

Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 477 – 528

Povrepersoun Poor parson

werk work
clerk scholar
preche preach
parisshens parishioners
benign gracious
pacient patient
swich such
Ypreved Was proven
Oftesithes Many times
Fullooth Very reluctant
Excommunicate for tithes. People were supposed to give one tenth of
Cursen for his tithes
their income or produce to their parish priest. This was known as tithes.
Out of doute There is no doubt
substaunce income
Fer asonder Far apart
Reyn ne thonder Rain or thunder
meschief trouble
ferreste farthest
Muche and lite High ranking and low
wroghte Took action
figure metaphor
iren iron
lewed Layman, uneducated
shiten Dirty, filthy (morally corrupt)

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 Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 477 – 528

clennesse purity
Benefice to hyre Rent out his living
Leet his sheep Let his parishioners
Encombred in the
Stuck in the mud
myre
Chaunterie for If he so desired apriest could get himself (from a patron) the job of
soules chanting a daily mass for the peace of the soul of a dead person
bretherhed Brotherhood (religious)
Be appointed (a parish priest for a religious guild or brotherhoodwhich
Been withholde
would be a wealthy Order)
His fold His parish
despitous scornful
Daungerous ne
contemptuous nor haughty
digne
benygne kind
bisynesse aim
snybben rebuke
nonys At that moment
Spyced meticulous
loore Teachings

4.2.17. The Plowman

Lines 529 – 541

With hymther was a Plowman, was his brother,
That haddeylad of dong many a fother; …
…………………………………………
Bothe of his proper swynk and his catel.
In a tabard he rood upon a mere.

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4.2.17.1. Detailed Paraphrase
With him there was a Ploughman, his (the Parson’s) brother, who had carried many cartloads
of dung. He was a true worker and a good one, living in peace and perfect charity. He loved
God best with all his heart and at all times be they good or bad. And then he loved his
neighbour as he loved himself. He would thresh and also ditch and dig for the sake of Christ
for every poor person without taking any payment for his labour, if it lay in his power. He
paid his tithes regularly and completely both of his labour and of his property. He rode in a
sleeveless jacket upon a mare.

4.2.17.2. Comment
The Parson is accompanied by the poor Ploughman, (a small farmer), who is not only related
to him, being his brother, but is also like him in character.Thus, another idealized portrait
follows, which is quite far-removed from the actual facts surrounding the labour class of the
fourteenth century England, already discussed in section 1.4. Chaucer’s Ploughman is a good
and true labourer who has carted many a loads of dung, living always in perfect peace and
charity. All the details of his life prove him to be an honest worker and a devout and true
Christian just as the Knight was. His portrait is in sharp contrast to the corrupt members of
the church that we have seen earlier like the Monk and the Friar. These men who should have
been true men of religion only use it for their self-gratification whereas the Ploughman, being
just an ordinary citizen yet lives up to the ideals of a true Christian.
He is dressed in a tabard which was a garment resembling the smock worn by country
labourers and rides upon a mare. Chaucer’s unqualified admiration for both these men, the
Parson and the Ploughman is strongly felt.

Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 529 – 541

him The Parson

yclad Carried, hauled
dong dung
fother Cart-load
pees peace
Gamed or smerte Pleased or pained him
thresshe thresh
therto also
dyke ditch

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 Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 529 – 541

delve dig
Povrewight Poor person
Withoutenhyre Without payment
His proper swink His own labour
catel property
tabard Short sleeveless jacket
mere mare

4.2.18. The Miller

Lines 542 – 566

Ther was also a Reve, and a Millere,
A Somonour and a Pardoner also, …
…………………………………………
A baggepipewelkoude he blowe and sowne
And therwithal he broghte us out of towne..

4.2.18.1. Detailed Paraphrase

Lest we may feel the list of pilgrims to be endless Chaucer tells us that there are only a few
left now and he names them all together. There was a Reeve and a Miller, a Sommoner and a
Pardoner, a Manciple and Chaucer the narrator himself. There were no more. Then he begins
with the description of the Miller.
The Miller is a stout fellow indeed. He was strong of muscle and also big of bone. His
physical strength had been proven because at wrestling he would always take the prize. He
was stocky, broadly built and a large framed fellow.There was no door that he could not pull
offits hinges or break it by ramming it with his head. His beard was as red as any sow or fox
and moreover it was as broad as though it were a spade. On the top of his nose he had a wart
on which stood a tuft of hair, red as the bristles of a sow’s ears. His nostrils were black and
wide. He had a sword and a shield by hisside. His mouth was as big as is a furnace. He was a
loudmouth and a bawdy talker, and his talk was mostly of sin and harlotry. He knew well
how to steal corn and take payment for it three times, and yet he had a thumb of gold
indeed.He wore a white coat and a blue hood. He knew well how to blow and play a bagpipe
and with that he brought us all out of town.

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4.2.18.2. Comment
This group of five pilgrims, appended as if it were as an afterthought, consists of thoroughly
realistic portraits of cheats and rascals. Each one of them is a rogue to the core, quite adept at
cheating innocent people in their respective professions. Let us begin with the first one-the
Miller.
In the Miller’s portrait, the narrator focuses on physical details and we get a sense as if
his keenly observant eye looks at the Miller up and down and records the details as he
observes them filling them in with some additional information like the Miller always
winning the wrestling matches due to his physical strength or that he had a thumb of gold
metaphorically speaking. So impressive is the physique of the ‘stout carl’ that the narrator at
once begins by describing it in detail:
Fulbyg he was of brawn and eek of bones; (Line: 546).
So strong is he that at the place where he came from, he would always win the ram in
wrestling matches. He was short-shouldered, broad, thick set (‘thikkeknarre) fellow who
could pull off any door from its hinges or break it with his head if he ran into it.He is all
brawn and no brain it seems.
The narrator seems to be almost eulogising about the Miller’s strength. Just having read
the two ideal portraits of the Parson and the Ploughman, we may begin to take the Miller’s
portrait at face value. The poet Chaucer however intervenes and the irony isnot so subtle
now. The disparaging comparison of the colour of the Miller’s beard with a sow and a fox
immediately checks our reaction. The implications that are there in the physical details would
have been all too clear for the medieval audience. The camera now covers, as though in a
close up, a big wart which he has on his nose that immediately individualizes him:
Upon the cop right of his nose he hade
A werte, and theronslood a toft of herys,
Reed as the brestles of a soweserys; (Lines: 554-56).
Once again in a thoroughly derogatory manner, the colour of the bristles on the wart is
compared to the colour of a sow’s ears. It cannot be a coincidence that twice, the same man is
compared to a pig and once to a fox. What are the implications? Well the associations are
with treachery, sloth, violence and also shameful fornication. The Miller has big dirty black
nostrils and a mouth as wide as a great furnace. Employed always in babbling, lying and
telling indecent stories:
He was a janglere and a goliardeys
And that was moost of synne and harloties. (Lines: 560-61)
Body and spirit thus show an interesting correspondence. He looks what he is. Now we come
to his skill in his business of cheating his customers:

96
 Welkoude he stelen com and tollenthries,
And yet he hadde a thombe of gold, pardee. (Lines: 563-64)
Though he well knows how to steal corn and take his toll thrice, he still had a thumb of gold.
Now if interpreted literally that would mean he was an honest miller, but Chaucer is careful
to tell us alongside that he is a clever thief, thus he uses the proverb ironically and implies
that he is not honest at all. You might like to know who he was stealing this corn from? Well,
let’s take a look back at fourteenth century England to understand better, the job and duties of
a miller. As Pollard explains:
There was little free trade in milling in those days and restrictions survived as late as
the eighteenth century. Every one raising corn on a manor would have to take it to the
manor mill to be ground, and thus, free from any check of competition medieval
millers became famous for their knavish thefts. In the Reeve’s Tale Chaucer tells how
two Cambridge clerks tried to protect the college corn by standing one where the corn
went in, and the other where the meal came out. But the Miller turned their horse
loose and made it run away, and while they were trying to catch it, he stole more than
ever.
(A.W. Pollard ed.The Prologue, Macmillan).
It is obvious that such a man was required to be strong and stout, just as our Miller is, so that
he could silence any complaints and could enforce fine on those who went elsewhere to get
their com ground.
As for his apparel,he is dressed in a white coat and a blue hood, wears a sword and a
buckler, and carries a bagpipe which he plays and in this manner leads the merry company
out of the town.

Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 79 – 100

Stout carl Sturdy fellow

For the nones For the occasion
wrastlynge wrestling
Alwey the ram The prize in a wrestling match
Thikkeknarre Thickset fellow
Nolde heve of harre Would heave off its hinges
Breke it Break it
rennyng Ramming it

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 Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 79 – 100

Cop tip
werte wart
herys hair
erys ears
nosethirles nostrils
bokeler shield
Greet forneys Large furnace
janglere gossiper
goliardys Vulgar talker
harlotryes Bawdy stories
Stelen corn, and Millers were allowed to take a portion of the corn they ground. This
tollenthryce dishonest miller cunningly took thrice of what his share was .
This was a proverb that an honest miller has a thumb of gold but the
Thumb of gold implication is that there are no honest millers. Millers used their thumb
to test the corn and the meal.
sowne play
therwithal With all that

4.2.19. The Manciple

Lines 567 – 586

A gentilMaunciple was ther of a temple,
Of which achatoursmyghte take exemple …
…………………………………………
In any caas that myghtefalle or happe.
And yet this Manciple setehirallercappe.

4.2.19.1. Detailed Paraphrase

There was a fine Manciple of a temple i.e. a law school, whowas an example for those who
buy provisions or foodstuff, forhe knew how to be wise in buying of victuals; for whether he
paid cash or bought goods on credit, he always watched out for his purchases so that he was

98
always ahead and in good condition. The narrator observes that certainly this was only by the
good grace of God that such an uneducated man’s wit shall surpass the wisdom of a heap of
learned men.
He had more than three times ten masters who were experts of law and also skilful in it.
Out of these there were a dozen in that house worthy to be stewards(managers of estates) of
rent and land for any lord that is in England and enable him to live by his own wealth with
honour and without any debt (unless he was out of his mind), or live economically if he so
desired. Also they were able enough to help in any emergency or accident that may occur.
Yet this Manciple fooled them all.

4.2.19.2. Comment
Chaucer defines the Manciple completely by his occupation and how extremely good he is at
it. Let us try and understand what a Manciple’s job was. “A Manciple in the fourteenth
century was, as he still is today, a buyer of provisions for a college, an Inn of court, or the
like. Chaucer’s Manciple is ‘of a temple,’ that is, he caters for the lawyers and students at one
of the Inns of court”. (Bowden, p. 256). This portrait begins with a direct attack on the
cheating capabilities of the Manciple:
A gentilMaunciple was ther of a temple,
Of which achatoursmyghte take exemple
For to be wise in byynge of vitaille; (Lines: 567-69)
Thus we are told that he is so good at deceiving people in the buying of provisions that all
buyers (achatours’) ought to take a cue from him. Whether he buys in cash or on credit (“by
taille”) he always comes out a winner and way ahead of anyone else. The narrator is
thoroughly impressed and observes:
Now is not that of god a ful fair grace
That such a lewedmannes wit shal pace
The wisdom of an heepe of lerned men? (Lines: 573-75).
Of course this is a sly remark from the poet Chaucer. One’s ability at cheating can surely not
be by God’s grace but for the narrator it is a skill as any other and he admires the Manciple
for it.
More than half the portrait is devoted to the skills of the men whom the Manciple serves.
He has more than thirty masters who are expert in matters of law and a dozen of them were
worthy enough to be stewards to any lord in England and help him live well. These worthy
masters of the Manciple were able to help a whole shire in case of any mishap. They may be
learned men and exceptionally skilful yet the Manciple is able to hoodwink them all. So
extremely clever is he at managing his show that he even gets the better of those who are
superior to him in every way! This surely makes him more skilful than them despite being an

99
unlearned man. The humour is quite direct in this portrait.The criticism that is implied in the
Manciple’s practices exposes him as a cheat.Chaucer’s irony that has been so subtle
throughout, now seems to be getting increasingly explicit and the satire and criticism surface
more often in the humour.
We are not given even a single detail of the Manciple’s physical appearance.

Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 567 – 586

gentil excellent
temple The lawyer’s Inns of Court
achatours purchasers
Byynge of vitaille Buying of provisions
Paid in cash or took by tally. A tally was a wooden stick that was used
Payde or took by
to buy goods on credit. Notches made on the stick recorded the goods
taille
bought
algate always
wayted Watched carefully, paid attention
For his achaat To his purchases
He was ay biforn He was always ahead
In good staat In good condition
Lewedman’s witshal
An uneducated man’s intelligence shall outdo/surpass
pace
heep heap
maistres Masters, qualified lawyers
More than thries ten More than three times ten
curious skillful
duszeyne dozen
stywardes Stewards/ managers of estate
hym The lord
His proper good His own wealth
dettelees debtless

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 Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 567 – 586

but unless
He were wood He was mad
scarsly economically
Hym list Pleased him
Al a shire A whole county
Any caas Any situation/ emergency/accident
Falleor happe Come about or happen
Settehirallercappe Set the caps of them all – made fools of them all

4.2.20. The Reeve

Lines 587 – 622

A Reeve was a sclendrecolerik man.
His berd was shave as ny as ever he kan;
…………………………………………
Tukked he was as is a frereaboute
And ever he rood as is a frereaboute.

4.2.20.1. Detailed Paraphrase

The Reeve was a thin choleric man. His beard was shaved very close and his hair was also
closely cropped around his ears. The hair in his front was cut short like apriest’s. His legs
were very long and lean like sticks there was no calf to be seen. He knew well how to take
care of a granary and a corn bin and no auditor could get the better of him. He could always
tell, in times of drought as well as rain, what would be the yield of his seed grain. His
lord’ssheep, his cattle, his dairy cows, his pigs, horses his livestock and his poultry were
completely in the Reeve’s control. And in accordance with his contract he maintained the
accountssince the time his lord had been twenty years of age.There was no man who could
find him in arrears.There was no farm manager, no herdsman, no other farm worker whose
trickery and treachery he did not know. They were all afraid of him as of the Black Death or
the plague.
His dwelling was very well situated upon a heath with green trees providing shade. He
could buy property better than his lord could purchase. He was secretly very well provided.

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He knew well how to please his lord subtly by giving and lending him some of his lord’s own
possessions and was rewarded with thanks from him and also a coat and a hood.
In youth he had learned a good trade, he was a very good craftsman a carpenter. He sat
upon a very good horse that was dapple grey and was called Scot. He wore a long outer coat
of dark blue and by his side he wore a rusty sword. This Reeve was of Norfolk from near a
town men call Bawdeswelle. He had hitched up his coat and belted it like a friar, and he rode
as the last of the company.

4.2.20.2. Comment
There is enough evidence in the Miller’s Prologue and the Reeve’s Prologue to point to the
fact that these two men have known each other for quite some time and there seems to be a
long-standing enmity existing between them. Robin, the Miller, addresses Oswald the Reeve
by name and the Miller’s Tale seems to be based on factual occurrences of the past in which
both he and the Reeve have participated. Chaucer has therefore been quite clever in placing
the Manciple between these two enemies.
What were the duties of a Reeve? To quote from Bowden, once again: “The office of
reeve on a medieval manor farm lay theoretically between that of bailiff, who was in turn
subordinate to the chief manager, or seneschal, and that of provost, but in practice the three
offices often became one. The activities of Chaucer’s Reeve seem to indicate that he serves as
both bailiff and provost, and even as seneschal.” (Bowden, p. 250).
As far as his physical attributes go, Chaucer chooses to begin the portrait by giving us a
detailed account of them. The Reeve and the Miller are opposite extremes even in the matter
of appearances. Where the Miller is a stout, heavy, thickset man, exuding strength, the Reeve
is so thin that there is no calf seen on his legs which look like staves. He is a slender ‘colerik’
man, with a close shaved beard and a close cropped head which gives him a somewhat
clerical appearance. His long blue overcoat which he tucks up like a friar and his rusted
sword are all indications that he belongs to an inferior level in society. But what about his
duties? Does he perform them well? It seems one cannot find a fault with him there. As the
narrator says, no auditor could find errors in his accounts. Be it a time of drought or rain, he
always knew exactly when to sow and when to reap so that the yield is never affected. He
looks well after his lord’s sheep, cattle (“neet”) and his dairy. Also his lord’s swine, horses,
stock and poultry. In other words he is completely in charge of all this. Since his lordship was
twenty years of age, this model bailiff, by agreement, has managed the whole accounts. No
man could ever find him in arrears and there was no bailiff, no herdsman, (“hierde”) no farm
labourer (“hyne”) who could be cunning or deceitful with this Reeve, without him coming to
know of it. He can even make better purchases than the lord of the manor himself. Everything
seems to be going on smoothly till this point. The Reeve is performing his duties extremely
well. But suddenly there is a change of tone:
They were adrad of hym as of the deeth. (Line: 605)

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“They”, here refers to the other workers on the manor. The Reeve inspires in all these men, a
fear which can be likened to the fear of death. Why are they so afraid of him? Is he a cruel,
relentless manager? Possibly so. This is not all, though. There are other negative aspects to
this perfect husbandman. He is also a cheat, a swindler who can sell the lord’s own goods
back to him and even be rewarded with thanks and gifts:
His lord welkoude he plesensubtilly
To yeveäidlenehym of his owene good
And have a thank, and yet agowne and hood. (Lines: 610-612)
In addition to this he is extremelyclever about lining his own pockets. He has his secret barns
stocked full. This Reeve, however, is master of the craft of carpentry:
In youthe he lernedhadde a good myster;
He was a wel good wrighte, a carpenter. (Lines: 613-614)
This one single detail immediately individualizes this man. Readers have often tried to look
for real life parallels for Chaucer’s pilgrims and it is personalizing detailslike these that
prompt such endeavours. He sits upon a good ‘Stot’, (which is probably a stout horse of a low
breed), of grey colour and who is called Scot. He hails from Norfolk, from near a town
colledBaidswelle. The narrator is quick to observe that this man always rides the “hyndreste
of oure route.” (622).
Where the Miller had been the one to lead them out of town, playing on his bagpipe, the
Reeve is his opposite and forms the tail of the group. Does it not indicate some kind of
shyness, inferiority, shiftiness in a man who always likes to walk, behind? The poet has
placed many pointers to make his opinion of this particular character quite clear. But the
satire is still genial. It is not vituperative or vindictive. Nor is it an explicit denouncement.
The last two characters who come on the scene now are so openly wicked and evil, that even
the narrator who all along has posed as a simpleton, is not naive enough to be taken in by
them. He too recognizes them for what they are and fails to find any excuses for their
behaviour. These two are treated with extreme disgust and loathing. They are both connected
with the church.

Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 79 – 100

sclendre thin
colerik angry
Ny as ever he can Close as ever he can
heer hair
erys ears

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Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 79 – 100

yshorn Closely cropped

dokked Cut short in front
Ylyk a staf Like a staff
Garner and bynne Granary and corn bin
Auditourkoude on
No assessor could get the better of him
him wynne
Welwiste he Wel knew he
By the droghte . .
By the drought and the rain
reyn
yeldynge The yield
neet cattle
dayerye dairy
stoor livestock
pultrye poultry
hooly wholly
Reve’s governynge Reeve’s control
Bryngehym in
Who could find him in arrears
arrerage
Nasbaillif No bailiff
Ne hierde No herdsman
No other hyne No other farm hand
Sleighte and his
Trickery and treachery
covyne
Adrad of him Afraid of him
wonyng dwelling
Astoredpryvely Secretly well-stocked
Plesensubtilly Please him subtly
Yeve and lene Giving and lending

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 Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 79 – 100

cote coat
myster Craft/trade
Wel good wright Very good craftsman
stot A stout horse
pomely dappled
Highte called
Surcote of pers Long outer coat of dark blue
Rusty blade Rusty sword
tukked Coat hitched up and belted
A frereaboute Like a friar
hyndreste Hindmost, the last

4.2.21. The Sommoner

Lines 623 – 668

A Somonour was there with us in that place
That had a fyr reed cherubynnes face,…
…………………………………………
As greet as it were for an ale-stake.
A bokeleeradde he maadhym of a cake...

4.2.21.1. Detailed Paraphrase

A Summoner was there with us in that place, says the narrator and goes on to tell us that he
had a fire red face like a cherub for it was full of pimples and he had narrow eyes.He was as
lustful and lecherous as a sparrow, with black scabby brows and a scanty beard. Children
were afraid of his face. There was no mercury, lead monoxide nor sulphur, borax, white lead
nor any oil of tarternor any ointment that would clean and scour and cure him of his white
pimples, the knobs sitting on his cheeks. He loved to eat garlic, onions and also leeks and to
drink strong winered as blood; then he would speak and cry out as if he were mad. And when
he had drunk the wine well, then he would speak nothing but Latin. He knew a few legal
terms, some two or three, that he had learned out of some decree – it is no wonder that he
knew that because he heard it all day and the narrator is quick to point out that we know all
too well how a jaycan call out ‘Walter’ as well as a Pope can. But if anyone knew how to
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examine him any further then his learning was all used up. He would always cry “The
question is, which point of law applies?”
He was a fine rascaland a kind one; men may not be able to find a better fellow. For a
quart of wine he would allow a ‘good fellow’ to have his mistress for twelvemonths and still
excuse him completely. Secretly he also knew how to seduce a girl and if he found anywhere
agood fellow he would teach him to not be in awe of the archbishop’s curse
(excommunication), unless a man’s soul were in his purse for he would then be punished
through his purse only. “Purse is the archdeacon’s hell” he always saidbut the narrator
intervenes and tells us that here he knew the Summoner was lying. Each guilty man should be
afraid of excommunication for excommunication will slay just as forgiveness will save.
Andlet him also beware of a ‘Significavit’– the written order for imprisonment.He had under
his control the young people of the diocese because he knew their secrets and was advisor to
them all.
He had set a garland upon his head that was as large as if it were meant to be hung on a
pole outside a tavern. He had made a shield for himself out of a round cake.

4.2.21.2. Comment
The Sommoner or apparitor, “was not a cleric but a minor official of the Church who was
connected with the ecclesiastical courts.” (Bowden, p. 262). His most important activity was
“to bear summons from the ecclesiastical court to the person cited to appear. By the end of
the century the apparitor had become a kind of “criminal investigator” for bishops or
archdeacons, who were the two officials commonly presiding in the ecclesiastical courts. For
them the summoner nosed out evasions of the law and any crimes which might come under
church jurisdiction: apparently his remuneration was a percentage of what he collected in
fines for the courts. It would seem inevitable under such a system that some apparitors would
become extortioners, and there is documentary evidence that that was the case.” (Bowden,
pp. 265-66)
The duties of the Summoner, therefore afforded him ample opportunities for taking
bribes. But before Chaucer tells us about this disgusting perversion of office, he begins by
giving us the Summoner’s physical description which is equally loathsome. His face is
covered with spots and pimples (“saucefleem”) and is therefore red as fire. He is hot and
lecherous, has narrow eyes, scruffy black brows and a plucked beard. He is so repulsive and
frightening to look at that children are afraid of him. “Of his visage children were afraid”.
(628) He has not left any stone unturned and has tried all kinds of remedies to get rid of his
“whelkes white” and of the “knobbessittynge on his chekes.” (633). Quick-silver, white lead
(“lytarge”), brimstone, borax (‘boras’) and oil of tartar, have all been used and found
ineffective. Of course the cause of his ailment is hinted at when the poet calls him “As hoot
he was, and lecherous, as a sparwe” (626), but we get some more details now. His food-
habits are repulsive for he loves garlic, onions and leeks and strong wines which are ‘reed as
blood’. And once he is drunk, then he would speak nothing but Latin. Lest we may be slightly

106
impressed, Chaucer at once proceeds to give us an account of how much Latin he knew and
why:
A few termeshadde ne, two or thre
That he had lemed out of som decree,
No wonder is, he herde it al the day;
And eek ye knewenwel how that a jay
Kan clepen Watte as wel as kan the pope. (Lines: 639-643)
So like a parrot (“jay”), he keeps repeating the few Latin terms he has learned.
Till this point, Chaucer, though not condoning any aspect of the Summoner, has not even
condemned anything. Only hints have been placed at various points, to enable the readers to
be wary of this character. What follows now however is loaded with sarcasm which reveals
the poet’s own indignation with this servant of the church:
He was a gentil harlot and a kynde;
A bettrefelawesholde men noghtfynde,
He would suffre, for a quart of wyn,
A good felawe to have his concubyn
A twelfmonthe, and excuse hymattefulle; (Lines: 647-652)
To put it in a simpler form, the narrator has seen no gentler or kinder rascal (“harlot”)
because, for a mere quart of wine he would allow a man to have his mistress for a full year
and not say a word about it. Most certainly because he would be enjoying the woman’s
favours himself and indulging in the same sin (“a fyrıch eek koude he pulle”). But this is not
all. If he finds a fellow who is willing to loosen his purse strings, the Summoner assures him
not to have any fear of the Archdeacon’s Curse:
For in his purs he sholde y-punysshed be:
Purs is the Ercedekeneshelle, “seyde he. (Lines: 657-58).
Money can wash a man clean as far as the Summoner is concerned. He can thus easily extort
money from people. The rich could always wriggle out of any sort of crime. The poor on the
other hand were always bearing the brunt of the Summoner’s duties and being punished
often.
The narrator is filled with indignation at this blatant disregard for the rules of the church.
The poet and the pilgrim become one here in their condemnation of this man:
But wel I woot he lyed right in dede,
Of cursyngoghteechgilty man him drede,
For curs wolslee, - right as assoillyngsavith;
And also war him of a Significani. (Lines: 659-62)

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The narrator/poet comes out with an outright denunciation of the Summoner’s disregard of
the curse. Money can never wash off guilt and if the Summoner is announcing so, he is lying
so says the poet. Every guilty man should be afraid of excommunication for a curse can slay
(“slee”) the soul just as absolution (“assoilyng”) can save it– and certainly one should beware
of the Significavit. To understand the full import of this line it is necessary first to understand
the meaning of Significavit. A significavit was the writ according to which a certain
communication was sent to the king. As Pollard explains: “The purpose of the writ was that
the Bishop had signified to the king (i.e. the civil authorities) that a man had remained
obstinate after being excommunicated for forty days, and he was therefore forthwith to be put
into prison till he made submission.” Thus Chaucer qualifies his earlier stand by implying
that no curses or absolutions are worth anything unless the penitent is truly contrite. The least
ironic statement is therefore about the significavit which a guilty man should fear most.
The Summoner’s control over the young people of the diocese, especially the young
girls, is an unhealthy one. He has them under his thumb because he knows all their secrets
(‘conseil) and is free with his advice (“reed”). What kind of advice can it be except wrong
and corrupt?
This monstrous, lecherous, loud mouthed, repulsive and avaricious character is crowned
with a garland of flowers and leaves, similar to the sign outside any alehouse. As a shield he,
bears a round flattened loaf of bread, a cake, which he will probably eat later.
The poet does not allow the Summoner to have any redeeming features. In fact, so
disgusted is he with the man’s blatantcontempt for the Church and the misuse of his powers
as a church official that the entire portrait is a downright condemnation of his character, both
in the physical description as well as the moral one.

Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 623 – 668

Summoner – so called because it was his duty to summon wrongdoers

Somonour
to the ecclesiastical courts. He served summons to them.
Fyr-reed Fire-red
Like a cherub or an angel. Chaucer id being ironic here because there is
cherubynnes
nothing angelic about the Summoner
saucefleem pimpled
Eyennarwe Eyes narrow
hoot lustful
Scalled scabby
Piled berd Sparse beard

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Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 623 – 668

visage face
aferd afraid
nas Was no
Quyk-silver,
Quick-silver, lead monoxide, nor sulphur
lytarge,nebrymstoon
Boras, ceruce, Borax, white lead
Ne oille of tartre No oil of tarter
Clense and byte Clean and bite/burn
Whelks white White pustules
lekes leeks
wood mad
termes Legal terms
Som decree Some text of canon law
jay parrot
Watte Walter
Whoever knew how to cross question him or examine him in other
Whoso . . . grope
matters
Questio quid iuris ‘the question is what law applies’ – this
Rascal (the word harlot was applied to both men and women in
harlot
Chaucer’s time.
suffre allow
Ate fulle completely
Prively a finch eek Pluck the feathers of a finch i.e. a bird thereby meaning he could easily
coude he pulle seduce a girl
owher Anywhere
The ercedekenes
The archdeacon’s curse which was the curse of being excommunicated
curs
significavit Written order of imprisonment
In daunger In his control

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 Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 623 – 668

At his own gise In his own way

Knew hirconseil Knew their secrets
Al hir reed Advised them all
Ale-stake A pole outside a tavern on which a garland was hung to identify it
bokeler shield

4.2.22. The Pardoner

Lines 669 – 714

With hymther rode a gentil Pardoner
Of Rouncivale, his freend and his compeer, ...
…………………………………………
To wynne silver, as he very well knew how;
Herefore he song the muriely and loude.

4.2.22.1. Detailed Paraphrase

With him there rode a fine Pardoner of Rouncivale, he was his friend and his companion who
had come straight from Rome. He sang very loudly “Come hither, love to me!” and the
Summoner accompanied him in a strong bass voice, even a trumpet was never half so great in
sound.
This Pardoner had hair as yellow as wax and smooth it hung as does a bundle of flax. His
locks hung in small strands and were spread over his shoulders, but very thinly, each strand
one by one. He wore no hood for fun, and kept it bundled up in his bag. He thought he rode
all in thelatest style with untidy loose hair and except for his cap he rode all bare-headed. He
had glaring eyes like a hare. He had sown a Veronica on his cap. In his lap before him he had
his bag which was brimful of pardons all fresh from Rome. He had a voice as small as is a
goat’s and he had no beard nor should ever have. His face was smooth as if ithad been
recently shaven. I think says the narrator, that he was either a castrated horse (gelding) or a
female horse (mare).
To speak of his craft however, there was no such pardoner from Berwick to Ware. In his
pouch he had a pillow case which he claimed to be his Lady’s veil. He said he had a piece of
the sail that St. Peter had when he went upon the sea until Jesus Christ saved him. He had a
cross made from a brass-like alloy and all covered with stones and in a glass jar he had

110
pigs’bones.With these relics he was able to make more money in one day from a poor person
dwelling in the countryside than that the Parson would get in two months. And so, with
feigned flattery and tricks he made a fool of thatperson and the people in general.
But to tell you at last says the narrator, he was a noble official of the church. He knew
well how to read a lesson or a story but best of all he sung the Offertory. For he knew well
that when that song was sung, he must preach and smoothen his speech to win silver as he
very well knew how. Therefore he sung merrily and loud.

4.2.22.2. Comment
The monstrous Summoner is paired off with a fraudulent Pardoner, who is his friend and
comrade.We are told that he had come straight from Rome. Chaucer’s disgust is apparent at
every point in this portrait. The more we are told of the Pardoner the more fitting we find his
pairing with the Summoner. They are really two of a kind and the first thing Chaucer hints at
is the possibility of them having an unnatural, perverted relationship. As thenarrator observes:
Fulloude he soong “Com hider, love to me!
This Somonou bar to him a stifburdown
Was never grompe of half so greet a soun. (Lines: 672-74).
In other words, the Pardoner’s love ditty is addressed to the Summoner, who lends it a strong
bass accompaniment. Evidently he is not averse to the Pardoner’s perverted, unnatural
advances. The former’s physical description too shows him to be effeminate: his hair is‘as
yellow as wex’ and smooth and straight and hang down his shoulders in locks. Almost like a
girl he spreads his yellow hair over his shoulders. He wears no hood for it was packed up
(trussed’) in his bag and he goes bare headed save for a cap, in his absurdly foppish desire to
be fashionable:
Hymthoughle he rood al of the newe jet;
Dischevelee, save his cappe, he rood al bare. (Lines: 682-83).
His description thus points not only towards an effeminacy of body but also of mind. All this
while the narrator is merely observing and giving us the details. It is the poet Chaucer who is
choosing these details to tell us by implication about the kind of person the Pardoner is.
Glaring eyes such as the Pardoner’s, indicate according to certain authorities “a man
given to folly, a glutton, a libertine and a drunkard” (Bowden, p. 275). As we read on, the
Pardoner justifies this assumption. Chaucer devotes a few more lines to emphasize the
Pardoner’s effeminate nature. His voice is thin as a goat’s, he has no beard and ‘ne never
sholde have’ and his face is as smooth as though it has just been shaved, and lest we may still
miss the point he explicitly states ‘In trowe he were a geldyng or a mare’. (691). Even the
gulliblenarrator can make an inference from all these details.
All the earlier suggestive remarks, observations, hints etc., are now lent absolute
credence. The friendship of the Summoner and the Pardoner is certainly a perverted
relationship. Chaucer is thoroughly scornful of the two.

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 But what of his profession? Does he perform his duties well? Before we look for an
answer to this question, a brief explanation is required as to the legitimate duties of a
Pardoner, A.W. Pollard explains thus:
A Pardoner was a trafficker in papal pardons or indulgences. In the early church a
penitent as a condition of receiving absolution would have to fast (i.e. abstain from
meat), or do other penance, for so many days, according to the gravity of his sin. Later
on, a payment of money to an approved charitable purpose was accepted as an
equivalent for so many days’ penance, and a certificate of such payment was called a
pardon or indulgence. The indulgence was a remission of ecclesiastical penances, not
a remission of sins, but its true character was easily obscured, and a theory of a
‘treasury’ of super abounding merits of the Virgin and saints ‘promulgated by Pope
Clement V. in 1350’ introduced new confusion. In order to raise money for building
or repairing a church or other good objects, men were sent all over Europe offering
indulgences to all who contributed. Moreover these authorized alms-gatherers were
out-rivalled by irregular ones, who having obtained, or forged, a license from a Pope
or Bishop, exhibited relics, to the veneration of which, so they pretended, special
indulgences had been attached in the cases of those offering money for the privilege.
Popes, Bishops, and Kings all tried at various times to suppress these irregular
Pardoners, but the traffic in both authorized and unauthorized indulgences went on till
the Reformation.
(A.W. Pollard, ed. The Prologue. Macmillan & Co. Ltd., London).
As is evident from the above explanation, the office of a pardoner afforded ample
opportunities of dishonesty, swindling and fraud. Chaucer’s Pardoner we see is a typical
representative of these irregular pardoners. He carries with him many false relics which he
sells to the unsuspecting innocent people. In his trunk (“male”) he carries a pillow-case
(“pilwe-beer”) which he claims is St. Peter’s sail when he went to the sea. He even carries a
crucifix made of ‘latoun’ (which is a metal like brass), studded with stones. In a glass jar he
has a few pigs’ bones. Armed with these relics he is always on the lookout for some poor
innocent man. Once he gets hold of one he is able to convince the gullible fellow and extract
more money from him more than a Parson could ever hope to earn in two months. Thus:
.... with feyned flaterye and japes
He made the person and the peple his apes. (Lines: 705-706).
This greedy, avaricious, lying, shameless, fraudulent Pardoner can prove a noble ecclesiast in
Church:
Well koude he rede a lessown or a storie,
But alderbest he song an offertories: (Lines: 709-710)
And when that song is sung, he preaches in his polished (‘afile’) tongue, but the aim is “To
winne silver, as fulwelkoude.’ It is only for the money that he sings so merrily and loud. Thus

112
his preaching, his sermonising, his songs and relics are all meant to deceive the people and
not to show them the right path. Such an absolute distortion of office, deserves an outright
condemnation which the narrator does with disgust. The tone which had been so genial
throughout is now bitter. There is no cloaking of true meaning, even the naive narrator can
see the truth.
Significantly, the Pardoner is the last pilgrim to be described possibly because he is an
outcast in more ways than one. Not only because of his physical impotence but also because
of his dark, perverted, unrepentant, unreformed heart and soul; his spiritual blindness or we
can say moral and spiritual impotence. As each of the pilgrims relates his/her tale, we get to
know them increasingly better and so also is the case with the Pardoner.
One more fact which would have had special relevance for contemporary readers, needs
to be mentioned. At the beginning of the Pardoner’s portrait Chaucer tells us that he comes
from Rouncivalle. This means, he isconnected to the convent of Roncesvalles in Spain.
Pardoners who worked for institutions governed from abroad were especially difficult to
control and just when Chaucer was writing there had been many scandals connected with the
Pardoner’s Rouncivalle. Therefore, contemporary public could already connect the Pardoner
with these scandals and Chaucer could thus have an added advantage.

Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 669 – 714

compeer companion
Bar to hym Accompanied him
Stifburdoun Strong bass
trompe trumpet
heer hair
heeng hung
A strike of flex A bundle of flax
His
Spread over his shoulders
shuldresoverspradde
By colponsoon on
Bystrands one by one
oon
For jolitee For fun sake
Trussed up Bundled up
walet bag
Newe jet In latest style

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Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 669 – 714

dischevelee disheveled
Glaryngeeyenhadde Glaring eyes make him to be a shameless person and the comparison to
he as an hare a hare is also disparaging as it indicates his effeminate nature
Veronica–St Veronica offered her veil to Christ so he could wipe his
face. The impression of Christ’s face was transferred to the veil. This
Vernicle veil was kept at St. peter’s in Rome. Copies of it were available and
ogten worn by pilgrims. The Pardoner professes to have a piece of this
veil or a copy of it in his bag full of relics.
Bretful of pardons Brimful of pardons
geldyng A castrated horse
male bag
Pilwe beer Pillow case
Our Lady’s veyl Virgin Mary’s veil
Gobet of the seyl A piece of the sail
croys crucifix
latoun Metal like brass
glas Glass jar
japes tricks
trewely truly
chirche Church
Noble ecclesiaste Te pardoner was probably not a clergyman.
storie From the Bible
alderbest Best of all
offertory The part of the Mass when people offer gifts
wiste knew
affyle Smoothen
murierly merrily

114
Apart from these pilgrims who are described in some details, there are two more who
undertake the pilgrimage. The Host of the Tabard Inn and Chaucer himself. The Host is
described briefly as a large man with sharp eyes, bold and honest in his speech and also wise.
‘A semely man’ he is also jovial and as opposed to the Pardoner, the Host is quite positively
masculine:
And of manhood hymlakkede right naught’, (Line: 756).
It is his suggestion that to pass their time on the way to Canterbury, each pilgrim shall tell
two tales and two while coming back. Of course the plan changes as already discussed in
section 3.0. but they do set off with his scheme in mind.
The pilgrim Chaucer however tells us nothing about himself except some short remarks
here and there. We as readers have to build up his character as it comes out through his
descriptions of the various pilgrims. He has a very important role to play, as the innocent,
naive, gullible, unsuspecting persona who takes things at face value. Some aspects of his role
have already been discussed in section 3.4. E.T. Donaldson’s essay ‘Chaucer the Pilgrim’
deals extensively with the topic.

5. The Conclusion
Having described all the pilgrims, the narrator proceeds to tell us a little about what happened
during the night that they all waited to set off on a pilgrimage the next morning. From what
the narrator has told us we are supposed to imagine that he has gone around talking to all
these people and has gleaned all the information he has provided us about each one of them.
In the ensuing lines he tells us about the story-telling game that they all plan, he gives us a
description of the Host of the Inn at Southwark, and he also describes how they draw lots to
decide who will tell a tale first and how the lot falls to the Knight and how they all finally set
off the next morning with a lot of fanfare. Let us read and see how it happens.

5.1. The Narrator

Lines 714 – 746

Now have I toold you smoothly, in a clause,
Th’ estaat, th’array, the nobre, and eek the cause . . .
…………………………………………
Heere in this tale, as that they sholde stoned.
My wit is short, ye may welunderstonde.

5.1.1. Detailed Paraphrase

The narrator sums up for us that he has told us briefly about the rank, the dress, the number
and also the reason why this company was gathered here in Southwark at this fine hostelry
that was called the Tabard, situated close by the Bell. But, he says, now the time has come to

115
tell us how this group of pilgrims conducted themselves during the night and he includes
himself in the group. After that he says he will tell us about their journey and all the rest of
the pilgrimage. But first he appeals to our courtesy and prays that we should not attribute it to
his rudeness, that he spokeplainly in the matter when he repeated their exact words and their
behavior, because he reported accurately whatever was told to him.He emphasizesit further
by saying that whoever repeats a story after someone, he must repeat it as truthfully and
closely as possible. Every single word must be close to the original if it be in the narrator’s
power,although he may seem rude and free, or else his tale would be inaccurate ‘untrewe’.He
may then have to make up things or find new words. So, he must speak the truth and not
spare the person even though he may be his brother. He is obliged to repeat their words.
Christ himself spoke very plainly in Holy Writ, says the narrator and also Plato said that
words must be closely related to the deed.The narrator now appeals to us to forgive him
because he has not set folks in their order of rank in this tale and the reason he gives is that
his wit is short so we must understand.

5.1.2. Comment
In these lines Chaucer the narratortakes us back to the point fromwhere we had started
reminding us of how he had planned to describe each of the pilgrims. He brings us full circle
here telling us that he has done what he set out to do. He has followed his plan and told us
what sort of person each pilgrim was and also about his/her social rank and attire. Having
read these portraits we are well aware that the plan has not been followed rigidly or else the
portraits would have turned out to be drab and uninteresting, all following the same pattern.
As ithappens and as we have witnessed ourselves in our reading of the Prologue, no two
portraits are alike. There is endless variety here andabundant humourand satire as well.
It is an ingenious move on the poet’s part to make the narrator apologize for being
impolite and rude while reporting all that he has been able to find out about these pilgrims
from his interaction with them. He is only being truthful he says which of course is amusing
since the entire work is a work of fiction. The narrator also apologizes for not having listed
the portraits in their order:
Also I prey yow foryeve it me,
Al Have I nat set folk in hir degree
Here in this tale, as that they sholde stoned;
My wit is short, ye may welunderstonde (Lines: 743-746)
Claiming to fall short of intelligence (my wit is short) is a master stroke of irony. We know
only too well how much skill and intelligence has gone into each and every description on the
poet’s part. The irony works so well only because the poet has created the persona of a
gullible narrator who approves of whatever he sees. The poet standing behind him, however,
constantly chooses words and details that make us see the reality of these characters. The poet
is being modest here.

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Making the narrator apologize for not having listed the pilgrims according to their social rank
is an attempt on the part of the poet to draw attention to the fact that he has done just that.He
begins with the Knight who in this company of pilgrims belongs to the highest social order –
the feudal class, then moves on to the ecclesiasts and then to the rising middle classes and
finally finishes with the rogues.

Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 714 – 746

soothly truthfully
clause In brief
estaat rank
array clothes
highte Was called
Faste by Close by
Belle Probably another inn
How we baren us How we bore ourselves/ what we did with ourselves
alight Alighted/settled
viage journey
remenaunt remaining
N’arette do not ascribe
vileinye rudeness
hir their
cheere behavior
properly exactly
moot must
reherce repeat
As ny As closely
rudeliche rudely
large broadly
feyne Feign things
spare avoid

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 Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 714 – 746

Moot as welseye Must say accurately

Fulbrode Broadly/ clearly
Ye woot You know
No vileinye It is not a disgrace
Mote be cosin Must be cousin
Al although
degree Social rank
My wit is short I am not clever enough

5.2. The Host

Lines 747 – 783

Greet chiere made oure Host us everichon
And to the sopersette he us anon . .
…………………………………………
But ye be myrie, I wolyeve yow myn heed!
Hoold up yourehondes, withoutenmoorespeche”

5.2.1. Detailed Paraphrase

Our Host welcomed each one of us, says the narrator and he set us to supper right away. He
served us with food of the best sort. The wine was strong and we were all very happy to drink
it. Our Host was an impressive man indeed, the narrator tells us. He was fit to be a marshal
i.e. a master of ceremonies, in a lord’s hall. He was a large man with prominent or bulging
eyes. There was no better business man in Cheapside. He was bold in his speech and sensible
and well-mannered and lacked nothing in manhood. Moreover he was a jolly man and after
supper he began to be merry. When we had paid our bills, the narrator tells us, the Host spoke
of mirth among other things and said thus: “ Now gentlemen, truly, you are heartily welcome
to me. For by my word and I shall not lie, I have not seen this year so merry a company at
one time in this lodging as is at this moment. I would gladly make you merry if I knew how
and I have just thought of an amusement that would give you pleasure and it will cost
nothing.”

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5.2.2. Comment
In this sectionof the Prologue we are introduced to the Host. He is described as a large manly
man, domineering, sociable, fun loving but a shrewd businessman. The detail about his
bulging eyes immediately individualizes him. He is an excellent innkeeper and runs his
tavern well. He looks after the guests nicely and serves them the best sort of food and wine.
As expected the narrator is impressed by him and approves of whatever he does. According
to him he is good enough to be master of ceremonies at any lord’s table. While the gullible
narrator observes, it is the poet working behind him who tells us what a smart businessman
the Host is. He introduces his plan only after all of them had paid their bills. He gets in their
good books by praising them all saying that he has never seen such a merry company before.
Having gained their confidence he proceeds to introduce his plan but not before emphasizing
that it will cost them nothing. He isa materialistic man and understands the importance of
money for each of these pilgrims and uses it appropriately in his plan.They look forward to
an entertainment that is also free of cost. He thus creates a sense of eagernessfor pleasure
amongst the pilgrims. His leadership qualities are evident.

Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 747 – 768

Greet chere Great welcome

everichon Each one
soper supper
anon At once
leste glad
semely Seemly/ suitable
withalle moreover
marshall Master of ceremonies
Eyenstepe Prominent eyes
burgeys ciizen
Chepe Cheapside
wys wise
Wel -ytaught Well mannered
Eek therto He was also
pleyen entertainment
mirth Fun/amusement

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 Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 747 – 768

rekeninges Payments/ paid our bills

atones At once
herberwe inn
bithought Struck by a thought
To doon yow ese To entertain you

5.3. The Host’s Suggestion

Lines 769 – 809

Ye goon to Canterbury – God yow spede
The blissful martirquyte yow your mede…
…………………………………………
Te me anon, withouten words mo,
And I wolerly shape me therefore.

5.3.1. Detailed Paraphrase

Addressing the pilgrims the Host says “you go to Canterbury – may God give you success
and may the blessed martyr pay you your reward! And I know well that as you go by the way,
you plan to tell stories and amuse yourselves; but truly it is neither comfort nor mirth in
riding by the way as dumb as a stone; Therefore I will create an entertainment for you, as I
told you before and provide some pleasure. And if it pleases you all to accept my judgement
and to do as I tell you, tomorrow when you ride by the way, Now by the soul of my father
who is dead, if you are not merry, I will give you my head! Hold up your hands without more
speech.”
The narrator tells us now that it did not take long for the pilgrims to decide. It did not
seem worthwhile to think too much about it and the Host’s request was granted without more
discussion. He was asked to say his verdict as he wished. Once again addressing the pilgrims
the Host begins: “Gentlemen,” he says, “ now listen to me for the best course of action. But I
pray you do not be scornful. This is the point, to speak briefly and plainly, tomake our way
seem short, one must tell two tales in this journey to Canterbury, I mean on the way to
Canterbury, and then while coming homeward he shall tell two more stories of adventures
that have happened to him in old times. And whichever of you does the best of all – that is to
say, whoever tells in this case tales of best moral meaning and provide the most entertainment
– shall – have supper at the cost of us all, here in the same place sitting by this post when we
come back from Canterbury. And to make you all the more merrier I will gladly ride with you

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entirely at my cost and be your guide; And whosoever will not accept my judgement shall
pay all that we spend on the way. And if you all agree to it tell me straightaway without
further discussion and I will get ready early for this.”

5.3.2. Comment
Two things are happening in the lines mentioned above. It only gets reinforced that the Host
is a born leader as he appoints himself their judge and chalks out a plan for a competition. It
is also very evident that he has an eye on his own profit because in the plan that he lays out
the pilgrims are supposed to return to his inn and reward the winner with a meal at everybody
else’s expense. So from the point of view of business the Host stands to gain in the
competition. To ensure that they return he even decides to join them in the pilgrimage.
The other and more important thing happening in these lines is that we are given the entire
plan that will string diverse tales together. This is the competition that the Host plans. Each
pilgrim willtell two tales while going towards Canterbury and two tales while coming back.
Whoever tells the best tale in terms of edification and entertainment will be feasted at the
expense of the other twenty nine pilgrims. There being thirty pilgrims in all including the
narrator this gave scope to include one hundred and twenty tales. The work as it stands,
however, is incomplete and has twenty finished stories, two unfinished ones and two
interrupted ones.

Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 769 – 809

God yow spede May God give you success

The blissful martir The blessed martyr (St. Thomas a Beckett)
Quyte yow your
Give you your reward
mede
woot know
Ye shape yow You plan to
talen Tell stories
To pleye To play / have fun
Doumb as a stoon Dumb as a stone
Makenyouw disport Entertain you
Seydeerst Said before
Y oon assent By everyone’s agreement

Stoned at my Stand by my judgement/accept

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Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 769 – 809

jugement
But ye be merye If you do not enjoy it
I wolyeve yow I will give you
Myn heed My head
Hoold up . . . more
Hold your hands I agreement without discussing it further
speche
Oure counseilwas
It did not take long for us to decide.
nat . . . to seche
Make it wys Discuss it too much
Withouten more
Without much consideration
avys
Bad him Told him
Voirdit . . . leste Pronounce his decision as he wished
Herkeneth for the
Listen carefully
beste
But . . . desdeyn But do not treat it with disdain
To shorte with
To shorten our way
oureweye
Viage journey
tweye two
To Caunterbury-
On the way to Canterbury
ward
Whilom hanbifalle Had happened in the past
Bereth him best of
Manages /performs best of all
alle
In this cas On this occasion
Tales of best
Tales of serious meaning
sentence
Most solace Most entertaining and comforting
Oure aller cost At the expense of rest of the plgrims

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 Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 769 – 809

Agayn back
goodly Gladly
My
Contradicts or disputes my judgement
jugementwithseye
vouchesauf Agree/grant
Tell me anon Tell me immediately
Erly shape me Get readyfor the journey early

5.4. The Acceptance and Setting Off

Lines 810 – 858

This thing was graunted and oureothes swore
With ful glad herte, and preydenhym also…
…………………………………………
Whoso be rebel to myjuggement
Shal paye for al that by the wey.

5.4.1. Detailed Paraphrase

The narrator tells us that everybody accepted the Host’s proposal and swore to abide by it.
The pilgrims requested the Host that he would consent to be their governor and would judge
and keep score of their tales and set the supper at a certain price. The pilgrims all agreed to be
governed according to his wish in every respect and thus unanimously the pilgrims agreed to
accord to his judgement. After that the wine was fetched immediately and everyone drank
and went to rest without tarrying any longer.
In the morning when the day began the Host arose, tells the narrator and awakened all
the pilgrims and gathered them all together in a flock.And they set off on their way walking
briskly at a pace more than a walk till they reached the Watering of St. Thomas; and there the
Host stopped his horse and addressed them again: “Gentlemen, listen if you please. You
know our agreement and I remind you of it. If what you said last night agrees with what you
say this morning then let’s see now who will tell the first tale. As ever I may drink wine or
ale, whoever rebels against my judgement shall pay for all that is spent on the way.Now let’s
draw lots before we proceed any further. He that has the shortest will begin.”
The Host then addresses the Knight and calling him his master and his lord he asks him
to draw the lot. He calls the Prioress and asks her to come near and also the Clerk asking him

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to leave aside his modesty. He calls out to all of them to not think too much and come
forward. The drawing of lots began, tells the narrator, and as it happened, whether by fate or
chance, the truth is that the cut fell to the Knight. Everyone was glad about it and it was right
that he must tell his tale as promised and agreed. When this good man (the Knight) saw it was
so and he was wise and obedient, he said “Since I shall begin the game, Why! Welcome be
the cut in God’s name! Now let us ride and listen to what I say.” And with that word, says the
narrator, we rode forth on our way. And he (the Knight) began his tale in a happy manner and
what he said you may now hear.

5.4.2. Comment
In these lines, under the Host’s leadership, the plan of the competition is followed through.
The Host proves himself to be the right kind of person to draw such a diverse group together.
He is chosen to be the judge unanimously which speaks volumes for his tact and geniality. In
order to make them adhere to the plan he even makes use of a mild threat saying that whoever
contradicts his judgement will have to pay for everybody’s expenses along the way. The next
step is to decide who will tell the first tale.
In this group of pilgrims it is the Knight who occupies the highest place in order of social
rank. The Host manipulates the drawing of lots in such a way that the cut falls to the Knight
to tell the first tale. The poet however lets it remain ambiguous whether it happened by
chance or was it a conscious attempt.
The last we see of the pilgrims is all of them riding out together in a merry spirit and a
cheerful manner enjoyingthemselves thoroughly.

Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 810 – 858

Oure othes swore Our oaths were sworn

vouchesauf Agree
governour president
Juge and reportour Judge and reporter
And set . . . prys And arrange a supper at a certain price
Reuled been Be ruled
At his devys At his direction/pleasure
In heigh and lowe In great things and small
By oon assent By everyone’s agreement
Accorded to Agreed to

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Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 810 – 858

Wyn was fet Wine was fetched

To reste went echn Each one went to rest
taryinge delay
amorwe In the morning
cok Cock, the rooster
gadrede gathered
Litel more than pas Little faster than the walking pace
watering Watering place –where the pilgrims stop to water their horses
Bigan his hors areste Stopped or pulled u his horse
If yow leste If you please
Ye woot youre
You know your promise
forward
I it yow recorde I remind you of it
If even song . . . If evening song and morning song agree i.e. if you haven’t changed
acorde your decision
mote must
Draw lots – the Host holds some straws in his hand of different lengths.
Draweth cut
The lot will fall to the one who draws the shortest straw.
Er that we
Before we go any further
ferrertwinne
accord decision
Lat be
Set aside your modesty
youreshamfastnesse
ne studiethnoght Stop dreaming or thinking too much about it
Every wight Every person
By aventure, or sort
By luck or fate or chance
or cas
The sothe is The truth is
The cut fil The cut / lot fell

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Glossary and Explanatory Notes Lines 810 – 858

blythe happy
As was resoun As was right
composicioun agreement
Han herd Have heard
What nedeth words
What more needs to be said
mo
That wys was That was wise/sensible
We ridenforth We rode forth
Merry chere Happy manner

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 Appendix I

Some Examination Questions

I. Reference to Context questions

1. Contextualize, paraphrase and critically comment on the lines given below

Me thynketh it acordaunt to resoun
To telle yow al the condicioun
Of ech of hem, so as it semed me,
And whiche they weren, and of what degree,
And eek in what array that they were inne;
2. Identify and critically comment on the lines given below:
And he was clad in cote and hood of grene.
A sheef of pecokarwes, bright and kene,
Under his belt he bar ful thriftily
(Welkoude he dresse his takelyemanly;
His arwesdroupednoght with fethereslowe),
And in his hand he baar a myghtybowe.
3. Paraphrase the lines given below and analyze them critically:
But for to speken of hire conscience,
She was so charitable and so pitous
She woldewepe, if that she saugh a mous
Kaught in a trappe, if it were deed or bledde.
Of smalehoundeshadde she that she fedde
With rostedflessh, or milk and wastel-breed.
But soorewepte she if oon of hem were deed,
Or if men smoot it with a yerdesmerte;
And al was conscience and tendreherte.
4. Identify and add critical comments bringing out the irony in this description:

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 This ilke Monk leetoldethynges pace,
And heeld after the newe world the space.
He yafnat of that text a pulled hen,
That seith that hunters ben nathooly men,
Ne that a monk, whan he is recchelees,
Is liknedtil a fissh that is waterlees --
This is to seyn, a monk out of his cloystre.
But thilke text heeld he nat worth an oystre;
And I seyde his opinion was good.
5. Paraphrase the following lines and analyze them critically:
A good WIF was ther OF biside BATHE,
But she was somdeldeef, and that was scathe.
Of clooth-makyng she haddeswich an haunt
She passed hem of Ypres and of Gaunt.
In al the parisshewif ne was ther noon
That to the offryngebifore hire sholde goon;
And if therdide, certeyn so wrooth was she
That she was out of allecharitee.
6. Identify and critically comment on the lines given below:
But first I pray yow, of yourecurteisye,
That ye n' arette it nat my vileynye,
Thogh that I pleynlyspeke in this mateere,
To telle yow hirwordes and hircheere,
Ne thogh I spekehirwordesproprely.
For this ye knowen al so wel as I:
Whoso shaltelle a tale after a man,
He moot reherce as ny as evere he kan
Everich a word, if it be in his charge,
Al speke he never so rudeliche and large,
Or ellis he moot telle his tale untrewe,

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II. Long Answer Questions
1. Write a short note on the opening of the General Prologue.
2. Do you agree with the view that the General Prologue is a cross section of the
fourteenth century England?
3. Critically analyze the portrait of the Prioress in the General Prologue.
4. Write a short note on Chaucer the narrator.
5. Do you agree with the view that all is not as it seems in the General Prologue? Justify
your answer.
6. Comment critically on the framework device used by Chaucer in The Canterbury
Tales.
7. Comment on any two ideal portraits in the General Prologue.
8. The rising middle class was an important section of Medieval England. Discuss any
two portraits from this group.
9. Comment on Chaucer’s use of irony in the General Prologue.
10. The satire in the description of the Pardoner and the Summoner condemns them
directly. Do you agree? Give reasons for your answer.

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 Appendix II

Suggestions for Further Reading

The Text
Benson, Larry D., ed. The Riverside Chaucer. 3rd ed. 1987, rpt. Oxford: OxfordUniversity
Press, 1988.
Coghill, N. (trans). The Canterbury Tales. London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1951.
Pollard, Alfred W., Chaucer’s Prologue, Macmillan & Co. Ltd., London, 1962
Robinson, F. N. ed. The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957.
Robinson, F.N. ed. The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1997.
Ranganathan, Harriet. The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Delhi: Worldview
Publications, 2014.
Skeat, W. W., ed. Chaucer: The Complete Works. London: Clarenden Press, 1912, rpt 1967.
Kolve, V. A. and Glending Olson ed., The Canterbury Tales: Nine Tales and the General
Prologue. New York, London: W.W. Norton and Company, 1989.

Background To Chaucer
Aers, David. ChaucerBrighton: Harvester Press, 1986.
Brewer, D.S. Chaucer in His Time.London:Longman, 1973.
Brewer, D.S. (ed.). Writers in their Background: Geoffrey Chaucer.London:Bell, 1974.
Coulton, G.C. Chaucer and his England. London: Methuen, 1908.
French, R. Dudley. A Chaucer Handbook.,New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1927.
Robertson, D.W. A Preface to Chaucer.Princeton, New Jersey: PrincetonUniversity Press,
1962.

Secondary Reading
Anderson, J.J.The Canterbury Tales: A Casebook.London: The Macmillan Press Ltd.,1974
Boitani, Piero and Jill Mann. Ed. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion. Cambridge: The
University Press, First published 1986, Reprinted, 1993.

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Bowden, Muriel. A Commentary on the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, 1948,
2nded. London: Macmillan, 1967.
Brown, Peter and Andrew Butcher. The Age of Saturn: Literature and History in the
Canterbury Tales. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991.
Cooper, Helen. The Structure of the Canterbury Tales. London: Duckworth, 1983.
Cooper, Helen. Oxford Guides to Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales.Oxford: Clarenden Press,
1989.
Knapp, Peggy. Chaucer and the Social ContextLondon: Routledge, 1990.
Hussey, S.S. Chaucer: An Introduction. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1971, second edition
1981.
Pearsall, Derek. The Canterbury Tales.London: Allen and Unwin, 1985.
Traversi, Derek. The Canterbury Tales: A Reading. London: The Bodley Head Ltd, 1983.
Wagenknecht, Edward. Chaucer: Modern Essays in Criticism.Oxford: Galaxy, 1959.

A Note of Caution
In addition to the books and articles mentioned above you will find more than ample material
available on Chaucer in various libraries. The list seems endless but remember that you are
not required to read each and every book available on Chaucer. You can use your discretion
and make your own selection of secondary material.

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132
Paper-IV : British Poetry and Drama: 14th to 17th Centuries
Unit-2

(a) Thomas Wyatt:

(i) ‘Whoso List to Hunt’;
(ii) ‘They Flee from Me’
(b) Edmund Spenser:
(i) Sonnet LVII ‘Sweet Warrior’;
(ii) Sonnet LXXV ‘One day I wrote her name’ from ‘Amoretti’
(c) Isabella Whitney, ‘I.W. To Her Unconstant Lover’
(d) John Donne: Vibhuti Wadhawan
(i) The Sunne Rising;
(ii) Valediction; Forbidden Mourning

Edited by: Unit (a), (b), (c) Prepared by

Nalini Prabhakar Deb Dulal Halder

133
134
 Unit-2

(a) Sir Thomas Wyatt

(i) ‘Whoso List to Hunt’; (ii) ‘They Flee from Me’
Deb Dulal Halder

1.1 Introduction

The Renaissance is not only known for producing the greatest dramatists such as William
Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, John Webster and others but also for the
freshness and vigour of its poetry. The poetry of the age opens with the publication of the
volume known as Tottel’s Miscellany (1557). One of the chief writers of this age, Thomas
Wyatt, esquire to the King, travelled to Italy on several occasion and was the first to
introduce the Sonnet to England. Sir Thomas Wyatt was born in 1503. He adhered strictly to
the Petrarchan model with such fine effect which was used at a later date by John Milton and
Rossetti. In this Unit, we will be focusing on Sir Thomas Wyatt as a (Petrarchan) sonneteer /
poet and specifically look at his two poems – “Whoso List to Hunt” and “They Flee from
Me” to understand the ways in which Thomas Wyatt is a representative Renaissance
Sonneteer / poet from England.
1.2 Learning Objectives
 In this unit, we will learn about –
 The Renaissance
 Renaissance Poetry: An Introduction
 Sir Thomas Wyatt
 The two poems of Sir Thomas Wyatt – “Whoso List to Hunt” and “They flee from Me”
 Critical Appreciation of the two poems by Sir Thomas Wyatt
1.3 The Renaissance
The Renaissance (literally meaning “rebirth”) is the name applied to the period of European
history following the Middle Ages; it is commonly said to have begun in Italy in the late
fourteenth century and to have continued in Western Europe through the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. In this period, the arts of painting, sculpture, architecture, and literature is
thought to have reached a level of distinction which was not surpassed by any culture/
civilization in any age. The development came late to England in the sixteenth century, and
did not have its flowering until the Elizabethan and Jacobean period; sometimes, in fact,
Milton (1608-1674) is said to be the last great Renaissance poet.
Renaissance scholars of the classics, usually called Humanists, revived the knowledge of
the Greek language, discovered and disseminated a great number of Greek manuscripts, and

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added considerably to the number of Roman authors and works which has been known to the
Middle Ages. The result was to enlarge immensely the stock of ideas, materials, literary
forms, and styles available to Renaissance writers.

Two Terms – ‘Renaissance’ and ‘Humanism’ – its Origin

In 1860, Jacob Burckhardt articulated the significant concepts of ‘Renaissance’ and
‘humanism’, in his book on cultural history, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy.
Burckhardt is confirming to the view that Renaissance is an age of revival of commerce
and urban life which laid the foundations for a secular and even anti-religious vision of
life. This new vision glorified the individual which was strongly reinforced by the
rediscovery of the pagan literature of the Antiquity (the classical age). The new secular
and individualistic values, which were somewhat incompatible with Christian beliefs,
constituted a new worldly philosophy of life known as ‘humanism’, drawing its main
ideas and inspiration from ancient Greece and Rome. Humanism subsequently became
the inspiration for questioning the moral basis of the feudal and Christian inheritances in
Europe.

Thus the Renaissance is thought to be one of the pivotal ages when we deal with the literature
from England as it is often also thought to be the first Modern Age. In your background
readings and background topics you will come across more about the age in much detail
which you are advised to have a look now, before progressing any further with this Unit.
1.4 The Renaissance Poetry
As stated in the Introduction to this Unit, the English Renaissance is not only known for its
theatrical accomplishments, but also for its poets. The Renaissance Poetry opens with the
publication of the volume known as Tottel’s Miscellany (1557).
One of the chief writers of this age are–
 Thomas Wyatt strictly adhered to the Petrarchan model.
 Sir Philip Sidney was also one of the famous sonneteer of the age. His chief works are An
Apologie for Poetrie, written in 1591, renamed as Defense of Poetrie. The Arcadia
appeared in 1590 in an unfinished state and appeared again in 1598 as a complete. The
Astrophel and Stella sonnets appeared in 1593 numbering one hundred and eight and
eleven songs.
 Edmund Spenser was born about 1552 and died in 1599 on January 16 in King Street;
Westminster. His publications include: The Shepherd’s Calendar, Prothalamion,
Epithalamion, The Fairie Queene, etc. The Faerie Queene realistically conveys Christian
dogmas. (We will be dealing with Spencer in the next Unit).
 William Shakespeare was also a significant poet of the age not only because of the poetic
nature of his plays, but also because of him being a significant sonneteer.

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 Apart from Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser, there are the Metaphysical poets who include
John Donne, Andrew Marvell, Henry Vaughan and others.
 As suggested earlier, often scholars also include John Milton to the nomenclature of the
renaissance poets, though he was writing much later.
But what is important to know is that the Renaissance poets achieved an eminence which was
not reproduced in any age after that. English Poetry – especially sonnets – finds a stunning
excellence during this period and we will be talking about sonnets in some detail before
moving on to Sir Thomas Wyatt.
1.5 Sonnet Form
Sonnet
A lyric poem consisting of a single stanza of fourteen iambic pentameter lines linked by
an intricate rhyme scheme. There are two major patterns of rhyme in sonnets written in
the English language:
(1) The Italian or Petrarchan sonnet (named after the fourteenth century Italian poet
Petrarch) falls into two main parts: an octave (eight lines) rhyming abbaabba
followed by a sestet (six lines) rhyming cdecde or some variant, such as cdccdc.
Petrarch's sonnets were first imitated in England, both in their stanza form and their
subject—the hopes and pains of an adoring male lover—by Sir Thomas Wyatt in the
early sixteenth century. …
(2) The Earl of Surrey and other English experimenters in the sixteenth century also
developed a stanza form called the English sonnet, or else the Shakespearean
sonnet, after its greatest practitioner. This sonnet falls into three quatrains and a
concluding couplet: abab cdcd efef gg. There was one notable variant, the
Spenserian sonnet, in which Spenser linked each quatrain to the next by a
continuing rhyme: abab bebe cdcd ee….
From – M. H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms

1.6 Sir Thomas Wyatt: Life

Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503 – 1542) was one of the most glorious poets / sonneteer of
Renaissance England who was much influenced by the Italian sonneteer Petrarch and
following his model of sonnets, Wyatt introduced the Petrarchan Sonnet form in England and
revolutionized the Renaissance poetical tradition. The lyrical quality of his sonnets makes
him one of the unparalleled poets of the English tradition.
It is also to be remembered here that Sir Thomas Wyatt was in service of King Henry
VIII and held many significant diplomatic posts which made him visit countries like France,
Italy, Spain and Netherlands. His visit to Italy started from 1527 and in this visit he got
introduced to Italian poets and literature which encouraged him to follow the models of
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Petrarch. Apart from Petrarch, he was also influenced by French poet Marot. Following
Petrarch, he brought the sonnet form to England. It is not only that he wrote sonnets, but also
rondeaux, epigrams, satires, songs, and a version of the seven Penitential Psalms. In other
words, it can be said that the lyrical quality of poetry owes much to Sir Thomas Wyatt in
England which makes Emile Legouis say–
“It was by the sonnet that lyricism again entered English poetry. Whether it was
translated or imitated mattered little. It rendered the music of feeling or passion. It called
forth the rare word, the Metaphor, subtlety and condensation. Its very brevity necessitated
artistic labour. Wyatt wrote no memorable sonnets, but he blazed the trace. His imitations of
Petrarch brought bold and new images into English.”
In the course of this Unit, as has been stated earlier, we will be dealing with two poems
by Sir Thomas Wyatt which we are going to do in the next sections.
1.7 Sir Thomas Wyatt “Whoso List to Hunt”
Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
But as for me, hélas, I may no more.
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of them that farthest cometh behind.
Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore
Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore,
Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I may spend his time in vain.
And graven with diamonds in letters plain
There is written, her fair neck round about:
Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.

1.8 Critical Appreciation of the sonnet “Whoso List to Hunt”

The poem “Whoso list to hunt” begins with a question in which the poet Sir Thomas Wyatt
asks the readers who enjoys the hunt as the poet knows of a female deer (hind). He moreover
states that he is no longer chasing the deer as all his earlier efforts went in vain and he feels
himself to be very tired after chasing the deer for so long. He is now at the end of the party
which is trying to hunt the dear; but at the same time, he states that even though he is tired to
carry on with the hunt anymore; his thoughts are always concentrated on the deer even
though he feels exhausted. Next the poet makes a comparison where he states that that as it is
futile to catch wind in a net similar is this hunt of the “hind.” In other words, the hunt seems
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to be fruitless. The poem ends with the diamond lettering around the neck of the hind which
asks not to touch her as she belongs to Caesar and that though she seems tame, she is actually
wild.
Sir Thomas Wyatt’s “Whoso list to hunt,” is usually thought to be a translation of
Petrarch’s Canzoniere 190. Sir Thomas Wyatt is a Petrarchan sonneteer. Usually the
Petrarchan lover is in love with the beloved who is unattainable because of she is higher up in
the social ladder and the lover does not dare to reach the beloved and silently carries on
loving him. The unattainability of the beloved makes the lover speak of the beloved’s beauty
and intellect in eloquent terms as does Wyatt in her sonnets. At the same time, the sonnets are
also a beautiful rendition of the social and cultural set up of the then times.
The poem “Whoso list to hunt” opens with the notion of hunting which is a favourite
pastime during the times of Henry VIII. In the poem the beloved is compared to the hind or
the deer and she seems to be unattainable as she has the cunningness in her to dodge all the
hunters and roam freely in the forest. The imagery of hunting brings to mind the medieval
pastime of the royal families who used to go for hunting expeditions. These hunting
expeditions are means not only to pass one’s time, but also to provide entertainment. But in
the poem when Sir Thomas Wyatt uses the analogy of hunting, he is not referring to his love
as a pastime or that of entertainment; but is presenting it to be a serious affair in which he has
been unsuccessful till now and therefore thinks that he should not carry further with active
hunting for the time being because he is exhausted. His exhaustion makes him feel that he
should leave the pursuit of the hind/ beloved; but at the same time his heart is not allowing
him to do so. In other words, it can be said that the poet lover is caught between his heart and
his head. His head – rational self – tells him to stop his pursuit; whereas his emotional self
says that he should not leave the band of hunters as he is in love with the hind/ beloved.
This dichotomy of the poet –lover’s self is well presented in a lyrical fashion in the
sonnet leading to the readers able to figure out the ways in which the poet is in pain as he can
neither attain the beloved, nor leave his pursuit. He is in a kind of a hesitant moment when he
feels that the hunt will necessarily end up in a failure; and yet he cannot leave the hunt as his
emotions does not allow him to do so.
The comparison of his pursuit of the beloved with the image of catching wind in net talks
about the futility of his efforts. The readers are made to feel the pain and the anguish of the
lover. The intensity of feelings of the lover and the cunningness of the hind with which she is
dodging the lover makes the reader figure out the poet-hunter-lover’s helplessness. It is this
helplessness which is further enhanced when the poet lover mentions the bejeweled collar
that is there around the hind’s neck which states in Latin “Noli Me Tangere” which means
“Touch me not.” This Latin phrase refers to the words spoken by Jesus to Mary Magdalene in
the Bible. Further it states that the name of the owner of the hind is also mentioned there as it
says – “For Caesar’s I am.” The hind or the beloved in the poem is Anne Boleyn with whom
the poet was in love with and who was married to King Henry VIII. As the poet-lover could
no longer vie for Anne Boleyn’s affections therefore he talks about the futility of his pursuit/

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hunt. Moreover, by referring to King Henry VIII as Caesar, he is giving a tribute to the king
for his greatness and bravery, charisma as well as political acumen. Thus the sonnet is not
only a lyrical representation of the futility of poet lover’s love for his beloved, but also a
tribute to King Henry VIII.
1.9 Sir Thomas Wyatt: “They Flee from Me”
Sir Thomas Wyatt: “They Flee from Me”
They flee from me that sometime did me seek
With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,
That now are wild and do not remember
That sometime they put themself in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range,
Busily seeking with a continual change.
Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise
Twenty times better; but once in special,
In thin array after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,
And she me caught in her arms long and small;
There with all sweetly did me kiss
And softly said, “Dear heart, how like you this?”

It was no dream: I lay broad waking.

But all is turned thorough my gentleness
Into a strange fashion of forsaking;
And I have leave to go of her goodness,
And she also, to use new fangleness.
But since that I so kindly am served
I would fain know what she hath deserved.

1.10 Critical Appreciation: ‘They Flee From Me’

The poem “They flee from me” is an excellent rendition of the sad affair of the poet–lover
who once was received benediction of love from the beloved, but now is being discarded for
the newer association of the beloved. The poem seems to suggest that the poet is in discord
with himself as he is not able to fathom the fact that the people, especially his beloved, who
used to be at his chamber eagerly looking forward for his intimacy are now behaving in such

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an awkward manner when they are fleeing from him. Time has turned its tide against the
lover as he is not anymore the favoured being of the beloved who seeks other’s company and
therefore the poem in some way talks about the futility of the efforts of the poet lover.
The poem begins with a very melancholic note when the poet mourns the fact that the
people those who used to throng his chamber (his house or his office) at one point of time are
fleeing from him. Though the poet starts with the pronoun ‘they’ yet we come to know as we
progress through the poem that he is not referring to many people but his erstwhile beloved
who is fleeing from him now. The phrase “did seek me with naked foot” suggest a kind of
physical intimacy which the poet enjoyed with the beloved at a certain time. At that time, the
beloved was “gentle, tame and meek” suggesting that she used to present that self of hers in
front of the poet. The questions that the poet seems to be asking are – Why is it that she
changed her behaviour with time? What makes her change her colours so much? The poet
cannot fathom the fact that the same people who used to meekly submit before him once are
now “wild.” The wilderness of the beloved makes us remind of her rugged nature who knows
not what she is doing.
At one point of time, the beloved used to seek the poet’s company for dinner (to take
bread) but now she abhors it and presents herself to be so that she is extremely busy with
things and does not have the time for the lover. Though things have changed, but the way it
was earlier was something which the poet is reminded of. He says that earlier, she used to
come to him in a “pleasant guise” and let her gown fall from her shoulders and she used to
get physically close to him and would sweetly kiss him and ask if he liked it. The poet further
asserts that this physical intimacy is not something which he is just dreaming about as he is
awake and in his senses.
But all that is a thing of the past; and now by some “strange fashion” things have
changed altogether and she has interest in new foppish culture. What the poet means is that
she has developed newer interests and is this enamoured by those and not having any time for
the poet lover. The poet then appeals to the readers that he has presented the case of the
beloved before them and now the readers should decide what she deserves.
The beloved probably is Anne Boleyn with whom the poet was in love with and who was
married to King Henry VIII. The poet could no longer think of being one with her as she was
the Queen. Though some scholars also feel that the beloved may be his first wide with whom
he sought separation for her adultery. It probably does not matter who the beloved is in real
life as the poem deals with a sensibility of the poet who is jilted in love and therefore asks the
readers what is the kind of treatment that the beloved deserves as she flees from him.
The poem represents the inconstancy of the women is typically thought to be
transgressive by the Renaissance men. It is to be understood here that though the poet –lover
accuses the beloved of changing her stanch as far as poet’s love is concerned, but the beloved
is not there to present her case. She may have a reason to do so. We, the readers, just hear one
side of the story and it is very difficult for the readers to decide what the beloved actually

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deserves as she may have a different story to tell where her viewpoint may be very different
from the poet-lover. But women’s voice(s) is usually silent in a patriarchal culture as she is
not allowed to speak and even if she speaks, there is no one to listen to her. The renaissance
may be an age of awakening for the mankind, but it is only for the Mankind and not the
humankind; the women are left out from the realm of that awakening. This makes the famous
scholar Joan Kelly question “Did women have a renaissance?” The answer is definitely in
negative and we will be dealing with this in more details when we come to the unit on
Isabella Whitney where the poetess would represent the inconstancy of the lover. ‘I. W. To
my Unconstant Lover” can be read as a poem in juxtaposition to Wyatt’s poem “They Flee
from Me.”
1.11 Let’s Sum Up
In this Unit, we have dealt with two poems of Sir Thomas Wyatt, a Renaissance sonneteer
and poet whose visits to different parts of Europe, especially Italy introduced him to the genre
of sonnet and made him imitate the form so as to introduce the same in England which is then
taken up by other poets of his times to make sonnet a major literary form of the Renaissance
times. In the poems that we have in our syllabus by Sir Thomas Wyatt – ‘Whoso List to
Hunt’ and ‘They Flee from Me’ we have discussed how the beloved is far off from the poet
lover. In the first poem – a sonnet – “Whoso List to Hunt” – the poet lover wants to give up
his pursuit of his lady love as he is too exhausted of pursuing her and thinks that she is
someone else’s partner now as being written on her neckband and therefore he should now
take a backseat in his pursuit of love; though at the same time, he is very anxious about the
same as his heart does not allow him to rest. In the second poem “They flee from me” the
poet lover talks about the proximity that the beloved once had with the lover and now she
flees from the poet –lover and consequently he asks the readers what image should people
form about her.
In both the poems, the beloved is shown to be physically far off from the poet –lover
following the Petrarchan tradition where the beloved is unreachable and therefore a kind of
platonic love exists between the lover and the beloved. At the same time, in the poems --
‘Whoso List to Hunt’ and ‘They Flee from Me’, we see that that beloved is shown to be
someone else’s or pursuing someone else. Thus the physical distance between the lover and
the beloved, keeping in tradition of the Petrarchan love, is been followed by Sir Thomas
Wyatt in most of his poems, especially in his sonnets.
1.12 Glossary
Sonnet: A sonnet is a distinctive poetic style that uses system or pattern of metrical
structure and verse composition usually consisting of fourteen lines, arranged in a set
rhyme scheme or pattern. There are two main styles of sonnet, the Italian sonnet and the
English sonnet. The Italian or Petrarchan sonnet, named after Petrarch (1304-1374) a
fourteenth century writer and the best known poet to use this form, was developed by the
Italian poet Guittone of Arezzo (1230-1294) in the thirteenth century. Usually written in

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iambic pentameter, it consists first of an octave, or eight lines, which asks a question or
states a problem or proposition and follows the rhyme scheme a-b-b-a, a-b-b-a. The
sestet, or last six lines, offers an answer, or a resolution to the proposed problem, and
follows the rhyme scheme c-d-e-c-d-e.
Theme: A common thread or repeated idea that is incorporated throughout a literary work. A
theme is a thought or idea the author presents to the reader that may be deep, difficult to
understand, or even moralistic. Generally, a theme has to be extracted as the reader explores
the passages of a work. The author utilizes the characters, plot, and other literary devices to
assist the reader in this endeavor. In truly great works of literature, the author intertwines the
theme throughout the work and the full impact is slowly realized as the reader processes the
text. The ability to recognize a theme is important because it allows the reader to understand
part of the author's purpose in writing the book.
Lyric: A lyric is a song-like short poem written mainly to express the feelings of emotions or
thought from a particular person, thus separating it from narrative poems. These poems
express vivid imagination as well as emotion and all flow fairly concisely. Because of this
aspect, as well as their steady rhythm, they were often used in songs. In fact, most people still
see a lyric as anything that is sung along with a musical instrument. It is believed that the
lyric began in its earliest stage in Ancient Egypt around 2600 BC in the forms of elegies,
odes, or hymns generated out of religious ceremonies. Some of the more note-worthy authors
who have used the lyric include William Blake, William Wordsworth and John Keats.
1.13 Self-Check Questions
1. Write a Critical appreciation of “Whoso List to Hunt” with close reference to the poem.
2. Do you feel the poem “They Flee from Me” deals with the frustrated lover or do you
think that the beloved’s inconstancy is the subject matter of the poem? Give reasons for
what you think about the poem.
3. Make a comparative critical study of the poems “Whoso List to Hunt” and “They Flee
from Me”.
4. Identify the context and critically comment on the following –
(a) And graven with diamonds in letters plain
There is written, her fair neck round about:
Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.
(b) It was no dream: I lay broad waking.
But all is turned thorough my gentleness
Into a strange fashion of forsaking;
And I have leave to go of her goodness,
And she also, to use new fangleness.

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1.14 Recommended Readings
 Foley, S. M. Sir Thomas Wyatt. Boston: Twayne, 1990.
 Heale, Elizabeth. Wyatt, Surrey, and Early Tudor Poetry New York: Addison Wesley
Longman, 1998.
 Jentoft, C. W. Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, A Reference
Guide. Boston: G. K. Hall, c1980.
 Mason, H. A., ed. Sir Thomas Wyatt: A Literary Portrait. Bristol: Bristol Classical
Press, 1987
 Muir, Kenneth. Life and Letters of Sir Thomas Wyatt. Liverpool: Liverpool University
Press, 1963.
 Rebholz, R. A. Sir Thomas Wyatt: The Complete Poems. Repr. New York: Penguin,
1994.
 Thomson, Patricia, ed. Thomas Wyatt: The Collected Critical Heritage. New York:
Routledge, 1995.

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 (b) Edmund Spenser
(i) Sonnet LVII ‘Sweet Warrior’; (ii) Sonnet LXXV ‘One day I wrote her name’
Deb Dulal Halder

1.1 Introduction
Edmund Spenser is one of the foremost poets of the Elizabethan Age who is not only known
for his sonnet sequence Amoretti but also for the poems such as “Prothalamion” and
“Epithalamion” as well as The Faire Queene which is thought be his magnum opus. His
works represent the poetic vigour of the Renaissance and therefore he can be considered to be
the epitome of Renaissance poetry, though often John Milton is being regarded to be so.
Though Fairie Queene is the most famous work of Spenser, we will primarily focus on
Spenser as a Sonneteer in this Unit.
In this Unit, we will be not only introduced to Edmund Spenser as a poet in general, but
also to two of his sonnets from Amoretti – Sonnet LVII “Sweet warrior” and Sonnet LXXV
“One day I wrote her name.” Critical Appreciation of these two sonnets will be provided in
your course of this unit to help you in your understanding of the poems as well as to get a
general outlook on Spenser as well as the age of Renaissance. At the outset it is to be
mentioned here that before you read the critical appreciation of the poems, you should
acquaint yourself thoroughly with the sonnets so as to develop your own skill of
interpretation of poems, rather than depend on critical appreciations.

1.2 Learning Objectives

In this Unit, you will learn about–
 Edmund Spenser as a Renaissance Poet / sonneteer
 Edmund Spenser’s sonnets from Amoretti – Sonnet LVII ‘Sweet warrior’ and Sonnet
LXXV ‘One day I wrote her name’
 Critical Appreciation of Sonnet LVII ‘Sweet warrior’ and Sonnet LXXV ‘One day I
wrote her name’
1.3 Edmund Spenser: An Introduction
As has been mentioned in the Introduction to the Unit, Edmund Spenser is undoubtedly one
of the most brilliant poets / sonneteers of the Renaissance who through his poems made such
a significant contribution that we cannot but think of Renaissance poetry without studying
him. In order to truly appreciate the beauty and complexity of Edmund Spenser's poems it is
essential to be aware of the historical circumstances that shape his poetry as well as the
literary traditions he participates in, creating a unique voice in Elizabethan poetry. In the
earlier Unit on Thomas Wyatt a detailed background of Renaissance and its Poetry has been

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provided which you can again consult so as to formulate your ideas, if you have forgotten
them. If you remember, then carry forward with the reading of this Unit.
Edmund Spenser was born in London in 1552 into a merchant family. His father was a
member of the Merchant Taylors’ Company. Though he claims kinship with the Despencer
family (‘House of Auncient fame’) in North hamptonshire, it is probably an attempt at
rescripting his lineage to his advantage given the highly stratified society he lived in. Not
being born a gentleman, he achieved professional success through his education. He entered
the Merchant Taylor's School as a ‘poor scholar’ (paying no fees or less) which was then
under Richard Mulcaster, noted for his innovative theories regarding education. The broadly
humanist curriculum involving training in reading and writing Latin, included lessons in
music, mathematics and physical education (Rambuss 16). However, it was his insistence on
intensive study of the English language (hitherto neglected in favour of the classical
languages) that proved to be an important formative influence on young Spenser, who
extended and enriched it through his poetic practice (Shire 12). In his preface addressed to his
friend Gabriel Harvey, inaugurating his career as a poet, Spenser bemoans the current state of
the English language which
‘Hath long time ben counted most bare and barrein of both (good prose and poetry).
Which default when as some endevoured to salve and recure, they patched up the holes with
peces and rags of other languages, borrowing from the french, there of the Italian,
everywhere of the Latine, not weighing how il, those tongues accorde with themselves, but
much worse with ours. So now they have made our English tongue, a gallimaufray or
hodgepodge of all other speches.’ (Spenser 503)
In The Shepheardes Calendar (1579), the poet feigning humility in calling himself
‘Immerito’ or the undeserving one, labours ‘to restore, as to theyr rightfull heritage such good
and naturall English words, as have ben long time out of use and almost cleare disherited’
declaring that ‘our Mother tonge ... is both ful enough for prose and stately enough for verse’
(Spenser 503). However, his first successful literary venture was as a translator, contributing
English renderings of Marot's French version of Petrarch's Rime 323 as well as eleven
sonnets from Du Bellay's Songe, no doubt school boy excercises. Published in Jan van der
Noot's A Theatre wherein be represented as wel the miseries and calamities that follow the
voluptuous World lings, As also the great ioyes and pleasures which the faithfull do enjoy
(1569), Spenser's imitations were worthy beginnings of his poetic career. Imitation, rather
than original composition characterised poetry in early modern England, proof of the poet's
erudition as well as deference to tradition. And yet, each poet, dealing with a pre-ordained
structure and decorum regarding subject matter was faced with the task of adapting it to his
own time and situation, thereby extending its scope and sometimes challenging the discourses
that literary forms create. This collection of print poetry, which was a covert attack on the
corruption within the Catholic Church under a veneer of general indictment against
worldliness, introduced him to several ideas like change, mutability, transience as opposed to
the eternal as well as schooling him in the Protestant cause.

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 He continued his education in Cambridge in 1569, reaping the results of curriculum
reforms approved by the queen in 1570, designed to fill bureaucratic offices in the Tudor
administration. He took his BA in 1573 and MA in 1576, joining the ranks initially as a
secretary, though by the end of his life, he was appointed Sheriff of County Cork, with an
annual pension of £50. The course of study for a Bachelor's degree spread over four years and
included subjects like logic, rhetoric and philosophy.
Religious debates and controversies regarding church government and doctrine were the
order of the day in the university circles. Queen Elizabeth's religious settlement, reverting to
Protestantism after a brief period of Catholicism under her sister, proved unsatisfactory. The
Act of Supremacy in 1559 proclaimed Elizabeth as the ‘Supreme governor’ in civil, spiritual
and ecclesiastical matters, providing legitimacy to her claim to the English throne. She also
instituted an Act of Uniformity that mandated conformity to the Anglican Church, though she
continued to be tolerant of the Catholics. However, they always remained a source of internal
subversion, often rallying around Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587) and the threat posed by
continental supporters, forcing her to bring in repressive measures. Challenge also existed in
the form of Puritans, who objected to remnants of popish practices within the reformed
church: like kneeling during communion, wearing vestments etc (Baker 46). Agitations
calling for more reforms were perceived as a threat to Elizabeth's authority as Head of the
Anglican Church, intensifying attempts to enforce conformity. Extremist views both Catholic
and Puritan, colored the various factions and disputes raging in the universities. In 1572,
during Spenser's third year, new statutes for the university that stipulated wearing caps and
surplices, provoked dissension. The Queen's proposed marriage to the Duke of Anjou (later
Henry III of France in 1574) also caused a furore in the country. Religious sentiments were
further incensed by reports of the massacre of St. Bartholomew's day in 1572, following
communal violence and planned assasinations of Huguenots (French Calvinist Protestants).
Spenser may have witnessed the demonstrations led by Puritans against the Catholic master
of Caius College involving the public burning of books and other artefacts (Shire 16).
It was during these tumultous years that he formed the most important friendship of his
career, Gabriel Harvey (1552?-1631), who like him had to rely on his talents and education
rather than advantages of noble birth to succeed professionally. Like Spenser, Harvey's career
is an example of opportunities that a humanist education provided. He was famous as a
university professor, published Latin and English verse of considerable merit, worked as
personal secretary and a civil lawyer. His skills as an orator won him the privilege of kissing
the queen's hand when she stopped at Audley End near Cambridge in 1578.
The two men were also literary collaborators, publishing their epistolary exchanges in
1580, as self-conscious literary performances. In the letters they discussed intellectual ideas
and exchanged verse experiments in Latin and English, flaunting their erudition and
rhetorical skills (Rambuss 20). Spenser, in these letters, discusses his progress with The
Faerie Queene (first half published in1590, books IV-VI in1596) considered as his most
important contribution to English literature.

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 Following his advise, Spenser left for London to seek further advancement, joining as
secretary to Dr. John Young. At this time he was fortunate to befriend Sir Philip Sidney
(1554-1586) and the members of his literary circle known as the Areopagus, as well as gain
the acquaintance of his uncle, the Earl of Leicester (1532-1588), as a possible patron.
Patronage or sponsorship by a social superior was necessary to make one's way in the world
especially if one lacked the requiste status by birth. In his letter to Harvey he describes how
he has been co-opted into the group and outlines their literary project to reform poetic
practice by a ‘generall surceasing and silence of balde Rymers’ to be replaced by ‘certaine
Lawes and rules of Quantities of English sillables, for English verse’ (Rambuss 21), a
concern both friends found significant.
The contentious matter of the still unwed queen resurfaced again in 1578, when
negotiations began to marry her to the Duke of Alencon, resulting in public outrage triggered
by the publication of a tract by John Stubbs, denouncing the proposed marriage as sinful,
forcing her to abandon what she saw as a politically advantageous union. It is in this context
that Spenser may have committed a political faux pas by critically alluding to the event in
Mother Hubberd's Tale (1591), as well as his close association with Leicester (who had
recently invited the queen's disapprobation by marrying unwisely). The poem was
confiscated, especially since it also depicted her current favourite, Lord Burghley in a
negative light. He was however not the only one who misread court dynamics. Philip Sidney
made his displeasure known in his letter to the queen and had to avoid the court for a year, in
order to escape her anger.
In 1579, he married Machabyas Chylde and published his first volume of poetry, The
Shepheardes Calendar, dedicated ‘To the Noble and Virtuous Gentleman most worthy of all
titles both of learning and chevalrie M. Philip Sidney’. The acknowledgement is returned by
Sidney who commends Spenser's verse in his An Apology for Poetry (published in1595),
placing the young poet in a vernacular literary tradition fathered by Chaucer. Spenser
provides literary precedents for his debut pastoral in his dedicatory epistle (concealing his
identity as ‘E.K') claiming:
as young birdes, that be newly crept out of the nest, by little first to prove theyr tender
wyngs, before they make a greater flyght. So flew Theocritus...Virgil...Mantuan...So
Pertraque. So Boccace: So Marot, Sanazarus, and also divers other excellent both
Italian and French Poetes, whose foting this Author everywhere followeth. (Spenser
504)
What is significant however, is his assurance and confidence in his poetic ability ‘that in time
shall be hable to keepe wing with the best’. Defending his use of ‘auncient’ words that may
strike the reader as unfamiliar, he also assures them that his sentences unlike ‘in most English
wryters useth to be loose, and as it were ungyrt, in this Author is well grounded, finely
framed, and strongly trussed up together’ (Spenser 503), stylistic discipline that will become
the benchmark of his poetry. He further commends it as follows:

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 No lesse I thinke, deserveth his wittinesse in devising, his pithinesse in utterning, his
complaints of love so lovely, his discourses of pleasure so pleasantly, his pastorall
rudenesse, his morall wisenesse, his dewe observing of Decorum everywhere, in
personages, in seasons, in matter, in speach, and in framing his words (Spenser 501)
The book was an instant success, running into several reprints within a few years of its
publication. A pastoral was also a shrewd choice for a debut though placed on the lowest
rung of literary forms, yet signalling a progression towards a genre that would test the poet's
merit: the epic, in his case, The Faerie Queene.
In 1580, Spenser travelled as secretary to Lord Grey de Wilton, the new Lord Deputy to
Ireland, which remained his home throughout his life, barring few official visits to London. It
is conjectured that this removal from the centre of political authority was occasioned by the
possible offence mentioned earlier. There is a lot of scholarly debate about Spenser's reaction,
whether he perceived it as exile or an alternative space that allowed him to achieve a degree
of success that may not have been possible in England. After all at the time of his death, he
was a landed gentleman and colonial planter.
His work as secretary was not sedentary or safe, involving travelling across the area then
under British control. He may have accompanied Lord Grey to Smerwick on a campaign to
rout the enemy (Spanish and Italian troops), who were later ruthlessly executed, an event
retold allegorically in Book V, canto xii of The Faerie Queene. It provided him with firsthand
experience of the functioning of the Crown's policies regarding its tenuously held colony.
Hard pressed to defend the British territories (the Pale) against Irish rebels as well as the
unorganised English troops plundering the countryside with few resources and
reinforcements, the Crown policy regarding Ireland resorted to savage campaigns followed
by confiscation of territory and resettlement. When unable to persuade English families to
settle, the land was leased to Irish tenants to cultivate on a contractual basis, transforming the
primarily pastoral lifestyle under elective leadership to monarchic feudalism (Shire 49-64).
The process was slow and ardous, under different Lord Deputys with intermittent spurts of
rebellion, especially with support from the Catholic countries on the continent, temporarily
quelled. An account of the horror and distress suffered due to inefficient strategies is
presented by Spenser in his A Vue of the Present State of Ireland (1596) where he
recommends sufficient military strength to be deployed for a major campaign rather than
addressing only immediate threats with lesser efficiency and followed by measures to
consolidate the victory rather than withdrawing the resources after a brief respite. Though as
a possible course of action it was implemented later under King James's reign, it seems that
he did incur the displeasure of those in power. The tract was published only after his death in
1633.
His principle duties as a secretary involved overseeing the official correspondence as
well as serve as paymaster for the messengers and spies employed by Lord Grey, drawing a
salary of £10 paid biannually. A succession of bureaucratic positions followed. He continued
as secretary even after the departure of Lord Grey, was appointed clerk of the chancery for

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faculties and acted as commissioner of musters in County Kildare, keeping record of the men
and armaments in the region. In 1583-4 he became deputy to Lodowick Bryskett, clerk of the
Council of Munster, eventually occupying the same post. He served as Justice for County
Cork in 1594 and later nominated as Sherriff in 1598. Along with these duties, he acquired
and leased annexed properties (estates belonging to the rebel Gerald Fitzgerald of Desmond)
in County Kildare that were redistributed to English families. He moved into Kilcolman
Castle in 1589 which served as his residence with six English households working under him,
allowing him to be finally be acknowledged as a gentleman (Rambuss 29). His position was
further fortified by his second marriage to Elizabeth Boyle, a relative of the first Earl of Cork.
The courtship and marriage to Elizabeth is recorded in the Amoretti and Epithalamion (1594).
In 1598, following the destruction of Munster plantation by Irish rebels, Spenser returned to
England, where he died in 1599. He was buried near Chaucer in Westminster Abbey, the
hearse attended by other poets and the funeral paid for by the Earl of Essex.
While considerable scholarly attention delves into the allegorical complexities of his
magnum opus The Faerie Queene, the sonnet sequence Amoretti printed along with the
marriage ode Epithalamion is often regarded as a break from the work of composing the epic.
Spenser himself suggests that it is a respite from composing the epic, in sonnet 80:
After so long a race I have run
Through Faery land, which those six books compile,
Give leave to rest me being halfe fordonne,
And gather to my selfe new breath awhile (lines 1-4)
Another possible reason for its comparative neglect is the fact that unlike other contemporary
sonnet sequences it ends in marriage. Reed Way Dasenbrock in an essay ‘The Petrarchan
Context of Spenser's Amoretti’ (1985) establishes a continuity in the development of the
sonnet as a form that allows for the mapping of a constantly transforming and unstable self,
arguing that Spenser's sonnets answer some of the dilemmas invoked in Petrarch's
Canzoniere (1374). Petrarch's collection of 317sonnets, 29 canzoni and 7 ballates, together
known as the Canzoniere or Rime deal with his love for a married woman, Laura, after seeing
her for the first time on 6 April 1327. His passion for her survives her death twenty one years
later on 6 April 1348, creating a discourse of love that continued to influence ideas of
romantic desire in the West for centuries. Dasenbrock summarises it as containing a variety
of moods, tones and poetic stances adopted by the male lover, addressing his complaints and
praise to an inflexible, often unobtainable Lady. However, in subsequent adaptations of this
mode, poets tended to capitalise increasingly on the possibility of presenting a volatile self
(especially when transmuted to represent the power relations between a monarch and her
subject) rather than deal with the attempt (whether successful or not) to transcend the love
situation and move outside the self, as Petrarch does by transforming Laura into his Beatrice,
guiding him towards salvation in heaven. Spenser in donning the familiar mask of the
Petrarchan lover is unique in sharing this desire to move beyond temporality.

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 While some critics like J.W.Lever consider most of the sonnets in the sequence as
imitations of French and Italian models, probable translation exercises of a former period
reworked to fit a new situation, Kenneth J. Larsen advances the view that the poems are
patterned according to a calendrical structure. Read in conjunction with Kent-Hiett's
identification of the numerical significance of the structure of the Epithalamion, where the
number of stanzas parallels the number of hours while the 365 lines of the poem mirror the
days in a year, the Amoretti then creates a vision of love that transcends time itself. The
figure of the lover also undergoes a change, for instance, from Petrarchan anticipation to
Wyatt's disillusionment, in sonnet 67, where Spenser while keeping the earlier models in
mind, translates the uncertainty and anguish into hope, sometimes read allegorically as the
promise of redemption by the risen Christ (Prescott 33 - 76). This particular sonnet illustrates
the versatility of the multiple modes of being the sonnet facilitates in its fourteen lines.
Petrarch's sonnet ends in despair after following a deer (symbolising Laura) only to reveal it
to be a vision and thus foreshadowing her death, as the collar on its neck suggests it belongs
to God. Wyatt in translating it adds to it the bitterness and frustration of a courtier under
Henry VIII compounded by his own love for Anne Boleyn, the king's mistress. The mood in
Spenser however begins with disappointment, the poet/hunter abandoning the chase, only to
be restored to hopefulness by the deer's willing submission, possibly signaling her acceptance
of his proposal for marriage. The celebration of love in marriage counters the predominantly
adulterous mode of Petrarchan love, signaling Spenser's remoulding of a discourse to suit his
particular need and thereby creating a distinctive voice in the history of the development of
the sonnet.
1.4 Amoretti
Amoretti is a sonnet sequence of Edmund Spenser which is written following the Petrarchan
norms of sonnets which was famous in the Renaissance England. Two sonnets from the
sonnet sequence Amoretti are prescribed in your course. The sonnets are Sonnet LVII ‘Sweet
warrior’ and Sonnet LXXV ‘One day I wrote her name.’ We will deal with these sonnets one
by one along with their critical appreciation and then the summing up of the same will be
done at the end of it.
1.4.1 Sonnet 57: “Sweet Warrior”
Sonnet 57 “Sweet Warrior”
Sweet warrior! when shall I have peace with you?
High time it is this warre now ended were,
Which I no longer can endure to sue,
Ne your incessant battry more to beare.
So weake my powres, so sore my wounds, appear,
That wonder is how I should live a iot,
Seeing my hart through-launced everywhere
With thousand arrowes which your eies have shot.

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 Yet shoot ye sharpely still, and spare me not,
But glory thinke to make these cruel stoures.
Ye cruell one! what glory can be got,
In slaying him that would live gladly yours?
Make peace therefore, and graunt me timely grace,
That al my wounds will heale in little space.

1.4.1.1 Critical Appreciation

Edmund Spenser’s Sonnet 57 “Sweet Warrior” from Amoretti is a plea of the lover to his
beloved to end the war that is going on between them as the lover cannot anymore deal with
the refusals from the beloved and asks the beloved to accept him so that he can be at peace
with her. The lover calls the beloved “Sweet Warrior” – an oxymoron of a sort, as warriors
are usually brave and cruel to their enemies. But the beloved is a “sweet” warrior as she
carries on battling the patience of the lover who pursues her all the time and she merely
carries on refusing him and his proposals. The imagery of “warrior” is in synchrony with the
feudal times when warriors are highly respected in the society and also the fact that the
beloved has the masculine quality of being a resolute being who has been constant with her
refusals.
The lover feels that he cannot take the refusals anymore and submits to the beloved. His
desperation and frustration is very much evident in the sonnet where the poet-lover presents
himself to be a tormented soul because he is not able to deal with his heart breaks. He appeals
to the beloved to end the war that she has waged against him and to accept his love. His zeal
of love had been such that he has become tired of pursuing his beloved. So the poet lover’s
powers have become “weak” and his wounds are “sore.” Like a wounded enemy before a
great warrior, the lover is prostrate before the beloved and is looking for her mercy.
In the next part of the poem, the poet lover speaks how from the eyes of the beloved she
had short thousand arrows which have pierced through his heart. It is not that she has stopped
shooting such arrows; she is still continuing to do that. The lover again makes pleas to the
beloved to spare him now and to stop doing such ‘sweet violence’ on him as he cannot carry
on living like this in pain forever.
Next, the lover calls these acts of the beloved to be very cruel – “Ye cruel one” – as she
carries on wounding the lover again and again. The lover further asks the beloved what
“glory” she is achieving in wounding the lover in such a fashion. It is usually in wars that the
warriors are cruel to their enemies and carry on wounding the enemy till the enemy dies. The
lover appeals to the beloved not to think of him as an enemy, but as a lover and further to
accept him so that he can live peacefully with the beloved. The lover further questions the
beloved what glory would the beloved find in “slaying” the lover who ‘gladly’ wants to live
with her. His appeal is that the beloved should not consider him to be his adversary and

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moreover accept him. If the beloved accepts him that it will be “timely grace” for him and
little by little his wounds will heal and they will be able to live the most fruitful lives.
The poem this uses the imagery of war – prevalent in medieval feudal age – to manifest
the ways in which the beloved is treating the beloved. The lover seems to be constant in his
pursuit of the beloved as even if the beloved carries on hurting him, he carries on living the
beloved. Even though the beloved is cruel to him, it appears to be “sweet” to the lover as his
love for her has made him accept the beloved the way she is and he is more than happy to get
her in his life. Therefore, in spite of continuous refusals, the lover carries on loving her and
hopes that she will someday realize his love for her.
1.4.2 Sonnet 75: “One day I wrote her name”
Sonnet 75: “One day I wrote her name”
One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
"Vain man," said she, "that dost in vain assay,
A mortal thing so to immortalize;
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eke my name be wiped out likewise."
"Not so," (quod I) "let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your vertues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name:
Where when as death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew."

1.4.2.1 Critical Appreciation of Sonnet 75: “One day I Wrote Her Name”
Edmund Spenser in Sonnet 75 “One day I wrote her name” talks about immortalizing his love
for the beloved in glowing terms in his verses (sonnets). The Sonnet 75 of Amoretti is not
only a celebration of the poet’s love for the beloved but also his verses. It is true that it is
because of the love for the beloved that the sonnet sequence sees the light of the day and it is
also true that without the beloved the poet-lover would not have created the verses which can
immortalize their love. Thus the verses and the love for the beloved are dependent on each
other in an organic way leading to the Sonnet 75 of Amoretti be a celebration of both the
poet-lover as well as the beloved.

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 It is a well known belief and also probably a fact in this world that true love can
transcend all boundaries of mortality and can look forward to being immortal. We know
many immortal love stories – whether they be of Romeo and Juliet or that of Heer-Ranjha.
Not only that these are the two stories, but in each folk lores, we will find numerous such
love stories which are immortalized. Immortality is love is a well known fact and it is to that
immortal love that the poet-lover is aspiring to in this sonnet. And when we are reading this
poem today, it has become a truth that Edmund Spenser’s love for his beloved has become
immortal as does his beloved.
The sonnet starts with the poet-lover writing the name of the beloved on the sand in the
beach and the sea wave comes and washes it away. The lover writes the name for the second
time and yet again the wave does the same. The imagery is significant in not only
understanding love of the poet-lover for his beloved but also the nature of human existence.
The significant ideas that the first four lines (quatrain) of the Sonnet 75 deals with are–
(a) The poet lover seems to be so engrossed with the beloved that he cannot think of
anything else but the beloved. So even when he is on a sea beach, instead of having the
pleasure of viewing the grandeur and sublime beauty of the sea waves, he is engrossed
in the thoughts of the beloved which is making him write her name on the sand. This
shows that the lover whole heartedly loves the beloved and cannot but think of anything
else but of her.
(b) That human life is finite and similar to the sea waves, death will come one day and
wash us away from this world. As the name of the beloved on the sand is a momentary
affair, similarly, human beings life in this world is also momentary and after that one
necessarily will encounter death leading to an end to one’s existence in this world.
(c) The image of Sea is presented to be very ‘masculine’ as it comes with all its might and
washes away the name of the beloved which the poet lover painfully writes on the sea
shore.
The next quatrain (four lines) is the beloved’s response to the vain efforts of the lover as he
tries to etch her name on the sand of the sea shore. The beloved tells the lover that it is his
vain effort to try to immortalize her mortal self. The beloved has a fine understanding of the
poet lover’s desire to immortalize the love and the beloved and therefore his action of writing
name on the sand on the seashore is being read correctly by the beloved, which suggests that
the beloved is a sensible as well as intellectual being who can read the mind of the lover very
well. But at the same time the beloved is also very practical and rational; as instead of being
blown away by the romantic act of etching out the beloved’s name which the waves are
washing away, the beloved remind the lover that she is also subject to decay (and eventual
death) as all mortal beings are. The comparison that the beloved does about the wiping out of
the name and that of the beloved’s life (death) is very poetic in its expression.
These four lines suggest the way in which the lover and the beloved are thinking in a
similar fashion. The lover trying to etch out the beloved’s name so as to find ways to

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immortalize her and the beloved reading the mind of the lover says that he cannot do so as
she lives in the realm of the mortal world. Thus the lover and the beloved though are thinking
about the same thing; but their worldviews differ a lot as the lover is thinking of ways to
transcend the mortal world and the beloved has accepted mortality as a fact of human
existence.
In that way, it can easily be said that the sonnet surpasses the theme of love to talk about
far greater significant aspect of mortality which is an essential fact of human life and the
Renaissance concern for humans is very much evident from the poem. Furthermore, it is also
to be understood that the Renaissance poets and dramatists were very much concerned with
man’s existence in this world and his relationship to God where the omnipotence of God and
the finiteness of human lives were significant concerns of their discourses. The sonnet 75, in
such a way makes an attempt to talk about the way in which love can transcend us from this
mortal world to the world of immortality – from the finite world to the world of infinity.
In the next six lines (sestet) the last part of the poem, this is the theme that is being
discussed by the poet lover as he ponders over the ways in which he can immortalize their
love. To the concern of mortality of the beloved that she mentions in the earlier quatrain, the
lover says that it is true that “baser things” (people of lower order) think in terms of death and
thinks that after death they become “dust.” But the beloved is not one from the “baser things”
– she belongs to the higher realm of society. Moreover the poet lover tries to assert the fact
that his love for the beloved has transcended her from the baser things to a higher realm and
therefore she cannot merely think in terms of death and mortality as all human beings do.
The poet lover also knows the fact that the beloved is going to die one day; that she is
mortal; but he feels that before death comes as a final act in their lives, he should devise some
ways by which she can be immortalized. The poet asserts again that the beloved “shall live by
fame” – signifying that her fame will be such that even after her death people will carry on
remembering her and she will thus be immortal. The means that the poet-lover has devised to
make her immortal are his verses (poems/ sonnets). The beloved has many virtues which the
poet will “eternize” – make eternal – through his poems. Thus the Sonnet 75 provides the
readers with the objective of Edmund Spenser’s poems in general and Amoretti in particular.
The poet intends to write the “glorious name” of the beloved in heaven with his poems.
In doing this, the poet shows some of the following things–
(a) The poet lover has firm faith in himself as a poet which makes him think that his verses
will be immortal and that through that his beloved too will achieve fame forever.
(b) That the poetry has power in it to go beyond the realm of the finite world and reach
infinitude. Literature or poetry, following Plato’s banishing of poets from the Greek city
states for it being not rational enough to provide humans with the adequate knowledge
of things, was also taken by the Puritans of the Renaissance England to demonize
theatre and poetry. As against the Puritan belief, Edmund Spenser is putting across the

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 value of poems and is stating how poetry can be a means through which we can
transcend this world of mortality to reach some kind of infinitude.
(c) The poet also has faith in the beloved that her virtues are so that they can not only be
immortalized in his poems, but also will remain to be virtues across people of different
generations and therefore she is an epitome of being a virtuous woman.
Therefore in the last two lines of the poem, the poet lover acknowledges the greatest human
truth that the whole world is subdued by death – that we all succumb to death some time or
the other; but in spite of it, the poet lover has the power through his verses not only to
immortalize their (lover and beloved) love. The most important aspect comes in the last three
words of the poem – “later life renew” – where the poet states that their love is such that it
can renew their lives and thus make them eternal. Thus the poet’s love as well as his verses
has the power in it to go beyond this world to find the world where there are no qualms of
mortality.
1.5 Let’s Sum Up
In this Unit, we have come across two sonnets by Edmund Spenser from his famous sonnet
sequence Amoretti – Sonnet LVII ‘Sweet warrior’ and Sonnet LXXV ‘One day I wrote her
name.’ These two sonnets talk about two different facets of the poet lover’s love for the
beloved. Where as in the first sonnet, the lover pursues his beloved in spite of her many
refusals and calls her a “sweet warrior” who has constantly wounded him, he appeals to the
beloved to accept him as his lover so that they can leave in peace with each other for the
remaining part of their lives. in the second sonnet, the fruition of love has already been
achieved and the poet lover is trying to immortalize his love as well as the virtues of the
beloved through his verses.
Thus the two sonnets represent two aspects of human life and love – one that of pursuit
and another that of fruition. These two makes human life worth living. If the lover would not
have pursued the beloved with all his might in Sonnet LVII, then the fruition of love and
consequent effort of immortalization of love in Sonnet LXXV would not have been possible.
Thus the two sonnets represent two aspects of human efforts of achieving love in one’s life
and achieving immortality through love and writing verses.
1.6 Glossary
 Renaissance: ‘Renaissance’ is an Italian word, meaning re-birth. Renaissance is
associated with major social and cultural developments in Europe between the 13th and
the 15th centuries. The contribution of the Renaissance to the emergence of modernity in
early modern Europe, and especially England, has been for many years an appropriate
entry point to the history of the modern world.
 Elizabethan Age: Elizabethan age is the age which coincides with the period of the
reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603). However the term Elizabethan age was used loosely to
refer to the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It was a time when the English

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 nation developed in all fields – commerce, maritime power, and nationalist feeling and
moreover in art and literature. It is the greatest age of drama with famous playwrights
like Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Webster and others. The
famous poets of the age are Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, John Donne, and
sometimes even Milton is also considered to be the epitome of Elizabethan poetry.
Francis Bacon and Walter Raleigh are also important scholars of Elizabethan era.
1.7 Self-Check Questions
1. Discuss Edmund Spenser as an Elizabethan Sonneteer with special reference to Sonnet
LVII ‘Sweet warrior’ and Sonnet LXXV ‘One day I wrote her name.’
2. In what ways do you think the poet lover of Edmund Spenser’s Sonnet LVII ‘Sweet
warrior’ and Sonnet LXXV ‘One day I wrote her name’ differ in their tones? Give
examples from the sonnets to justify your answer.
3. In what ways to you think the poet lover of Sonnet LXXV “One day I Wrote her name”
celebrates his love? Do you think he has been able to immortalize his love for the
beloved? Why do you think so?
4. Edmund Spenser celebrates love in the sonnet sequence Amoretti. Do you agree with
the statement? Write your answer with specific reference to Edmund Spenser’s Sonnet
LVII ‘Sweet warrior’ and Sonnet LXXV ‘One day I wrote her name.’
5. Identify the context and critically comment on the following lines –
(a) “Not so,” (quod I) “let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your vertues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name:
(b) Sweet warrior! when shall I have peace with you?
High time it is this warre now ended were,
Which I no longer can endure to sue,
Ne your incessant battry more to beare.
1.8 Recommended Readings
 Baker, David J. ‘Historical Contexts: Britain and Europe’ in The Cambridge
Companion to Spenser. Ed. Andrew Hadfield. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001).
 Dasenbrock, Reed Way. ‘The Petrarchan Context of Spenser's Amoretti’ in Sidney,
Spenser and Donne: A Critical Introduction. Ed. Rina Ramdev. (Delhi: Worldview
Publications, 2003).
 Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare.
(Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1980).

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 Larsen, Kenneth J. Edmund Spenser's Amoretti and Epithalamion: A Critical Edition.
(USA: Arizona State University Press, 1997)
 Lever, J.W. The Elizabethan Love Sonnet. (London: Methuen, 1966 rpt).
 Prescott, Anne Lake and Hugh MacLean. Ed. Edmund Spenser's Poetry. (USA: W.W.
Norton and Company, 1993, 1968).
 Rambuss, Richard. ‘Spenser's Life and Career’ in The Cambridge Companion to
Spenser .Ed. Andrew Hadfield. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001).
 Shire, Helena. A Preface to Spenser. (London and New York: Longman, 1978).

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 (c) Isabella Whitney
“I.W. To her Unconstant Lover”
Deb Dulal Halder

1.1 Introduction
Isabella Whitney is a sixteenth century (The Renaissance) poetess who in her poem “I. W. To
her Unconstant Lover” makes a plea to her lover to be faithful to her love for him. The lover
has decided to marry someone else and this is being taken as the occasion by Isabella
Whitney to show her discomfiture with the lover and his faithfulness. The poem moreover
suggests the lover what he could expect from the beloved. The poem is thought to be a
beautiful rendition in the form of a letter which talks about the man-woman relationship as
well as the culture of the 16th century in clearer terms from a female perspective.
In this Unit, our focus will be to understand the poem “I. W. To her Unconstant Lover”
critically to figure out the poetic devices used by a female poet of the Renaissance times so as
to manifest her notions of love and also to probe the culture of her times from a female
perspective. It is very significant to understand here that there are very few women’s writings
which has survived the onslaught of the male canonizers of literature and literary traditions
and therefore whatever little is available from women writers of the Renaissance times such
as Isabella Whitney or Jane Anger needs to be probed in much more details so as to
understand the ways in which Renaissance thought about its women and gender issues.
1.2 Learning Objectives
In this Unit, you will learn about –
 The Renaissance poetess Isabella Whitney
 The Understanding of the poem “I. W. To her Unconstant Lover” and its Critical
Appreciation
 The status of women during the Renaissance, with special reference to Isabella Whitney
1.3 Isabella Whitney: Life and Times
Isabella Whitney is a sixteenth century poetess who is also thought to be the first professional
women writer of England and has expressed herself in very clear terms in her poetry as a
voice critiquing the patriarchal claims of the Elizabethan Society. She was born in Cheshire,
England in the influential Whitney family. Whitney lived and worked in London until 1573,
thereupon going back to her family home in Ryles Green as she could not support herself
through her writings. In 1580, Isbella Whitney married Richard Eldershaw. They had two
children: Marie and Edmund. Whitney as a professional writer tried to be in close contact
with the publishing world of the then times, but was unable to achieve much during her life
time as it was very difficult for a woman writer to establish herself in those times.

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Some Significant works of Isabella Whitney are–
 The Copy of a Letter, Lately Written in Meter, by a Young Gentlewoman To her
Unconstant Lover (1567)
 A Sweet Nosgay, or Pleasant Poise: Containing a Hundred and Ten Philosophical
Flowers
 A Farewell to the Reader (1573)
 Will and Testament (1573)
 Ovidius Naso His Remedie of Love (1600)

1.4 Critical Appreciation of the poem “I. W. To her Unconstant Lover”

I. W. To her unconstant Lover: Isabella Whitney
As close as you your weding kept
yet now the trueth I here:
Which you (yer now) might me have told
what nede you nay to swere?
You know I alwayes wisht you wel
so wyll I during lyfe:
But sith you shal a Husband be
God sent you a good wyfe.
And this (where so you shal become)
full boldly may you boast:
That once you had as true a Love,
as dwelt in any Coast.

Whose constantnesse had never quaild

if you had not begonne:
And yet it is not so far past,
but might agayne be wonne.
If you so would: yea and not change
so long as lyfe should last:
But yf that needes you marry must?
then farewell hope is past.
And if you cannot be content
to lead a single lyfe?
(Although the same right quiet be)
then take me to your wife.

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So shall the promises be kept,
that you so firmly made:
Now chuse whether ye wyll be true,
or be of SINONS trade.
Whose trade if that you long shal use,
it shal your kindred stayne:
Example take by many a one
whose falshood now is playne.
As by ENEAS first of all,
who dydpoore DIDO leave,
Causing the Quene by his untrueth
with Sword her hart to cleave,
Also I finde that THESEUS did,
his faithfull love forsake:
Stealyng away within the night,
before she dyd awake.
JASON that came of noble race,
two Ladies did begile:
I muse how he durst shew his face,
to them that knew his wile.
For when he by MEDEAS arte,
had got the Fleece of Gold
And also had of her that time,
al kynd of things he wolde.

He toke his Ship and fled away

regarding not the vowes;
That he dyd make so faithfully,
unto his loving Spowes,

How durst he trust the surging Seas

knowing himself forsworne?
Why dyd he scape safe to the land,
before the ship was torne?
I think King Aeolus stayd the winds
and Neptune rulde the Sea:
Then might he boldly passe the waves
no perils could him slea.

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But if his falsehed had to them,
bin manifest befor:
They wold have rent the ship as soone
as he had gon from shore.
Now may you heare how falsenes is
made manyfest in time:
Although they that commit the same,
think it a veniall crime.
For they, for their unfaithfulnes,
did get perpetuall Fame:
Fame? Wherefore dyd I terme it so?
I should have cald it shame.
Let Theseus be, let Jason passe,
let Paris also scape:
That brought destruction unto Troy
all through the Grecian Rape,
And unto me a Troylus be,
if not you may compare:
With any of these parsons that
above expressed are.
But if I can not please your minde,
for wants that rest in me:
Wed whom you list, I am content,
your refuse for to be.
It shall suffise me simple soule,
of thee to be forsaken:
And it may chance although not yet
you wish you had me taken.

But rather then you shold have cause

to wish this through your wyfe:
I wysh to her, ere you her have,
no more but losse of lyfe.
For she that shal so happy be,
of thee to be elect:
I wish her vertues to be such,
she nede not be suspect.

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I rather wish her HELENS face,
then one of HELENS trade:
With chastnes of PENELOPE
the which did never fade.
A LUCRES for her constancy,
and Thisbie for her trueth:
If such thou have, then PETO be
not PARIS, that were rueth.
Perchance, ye will think this thing rare
in on woman to fynd:
Save Helens beauty, al the rest
the Gods have me assignd.
These words I do not spek thinking
from thy new Love to turne thee:
Thou knowst by prof what I deserve
Inede not to informe thee.
But let that passe: would God I had
Cassandraes gift me lent:
Then either thy yllchaunce or mine
my foresight might prevent.
But all in vayne for this I seeke,
wishes may not attaine it
Therefore may hap to me what shall,
and I cannot refraine it.
Wherfore I pray God be my guide
and also thee defend:
No worser then I wish my selfe,
untill thy lyfeshal end.

Which life I pray God, may agayne,

King Nestors lyfe renew:
And after that your soule may rest
amongst the heavenly crew.
Therto I wish King Xerxis wealth,
or els King Cressus Gould:
With as much rest and quietnesse
as man may have on Mould.

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 And when you shall this letter have
let it be kept in store?
For she that sent the same, hath sworn
as yet to send no more.
And now farewel, for why at large
my mind is here exprest?
The which you may perceive, if that
you do peruse the rest?

Isabella Whitney’s The Copy of a Letter, Lately Written in Meter, by a Young Gentlewoman
To her Unconstant Lover, written in 1567, is written in an epistolary form (in the form of a
letter) to her “unconstant” – (unfaithful) – lover when she hears that her lover is going to get
married to someone else. The lover has tried his best to keep this a secret so that the beloved
does not come to know about it; yet she comes to know. In the course of the poem, the
poetess makes an attempt to present her point of view, sometimes as a jilted woman who
keeps on reminding her lover that he has done gross injustice by abandoning her and
sometimes in the voice of a counselor offering her lover advices which is not only meant for
her, but for the whole Mankind.
Isabella Whitney states that she had lover him truly and therefore has always wished him
well and will continue to do so throughout her life. Even though he has determined to marry
someone else, the beloved feels that she should always remain faithful to him and wish him
well. She moreover adds that he can always be boastful of loving someone who has been
faithful throughout her life. At the same time, she also states that if he needs to marry
someone, why does not he marry her and keep the promises that he had made to her.
Though the poem starts in a very personal note and speaks about the way in which the
lover has jilted her; but very soon the poem gets into a host of classical allusions (primarily
Greek) to make a discourse on “faithfulness.” These series of allusions make us feel how
learned Isabella Whitney is about the Greek mythology which makes her write a poem stating
the significance of constancy from the Classical Age onwards. The references that she makes
in the course of the poem are as follows–
 Isabella Whitney asks her lover to choose between honesty and “Sinon’s trade.” Sinon is
a Greek soldier, who allowed himself to be captured by the Trojans and then persuaded
them to take the Trojan horse into their city. He was thought to be an emblem of
deception.
 Whitney takes names of other such treacherous men as that of Sinon, such as, (a) Aeneas
who abandoned Dido, (b) Theseus who deserted Ariadne (c) Jason who betrayed Medea.
By referring to a host of Greek mythological characters like that she wants to tell that
there is a tendency among men to betray the trust and yet it is usually women who are
thought and represented to be unfaithful. During the Renaissance, women were usually
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 kept under the patriarchal checks and balances as it was thought that given a chance they
would show that they are not trustworthy and will create some kind of blasphemous
things which will mar the social order. Therefore to keep women on checks, the Puritans
during the renaissance made elaborate discourses on their pamphlets which we will be
dealing with in a while.
 By referring to these host of unfaithful men, Isabella Whitney also wanted to remind her
lover of the ways in which these Greek characters are thought to be the epitome of shame
and She further suggests that he should not follow their examples.
 Isabella Whitney also takes the example of Paris who brought about the destruction of
Troy by betraying his host, Agamemnon, and running away with Agamemnon's wife,
Helen.
 Whitney moreover counsels her lover to be like Troilus as Troilus, a brother of Paris, died
faithful to his lover, Cressida, and became a symbol of constancy. So if there are
examples of “unconstant’ men in Greek mythology, then there are characters like Paris
who should be the role model for her lover.
She then further wishes that her lover gets the most awesome wife that one can expect in life.
She enumerates some of the qualities of what he can expect in his wife–
(a) the beauty of Helen
(b) the faithfulness of Penelope,
(c) the constancy of Lucrece, and
(d) the true love of Thisbe.
By having the qualities of all these women, the wife of her lover would be someone who will
again be the ideal woman and Isabella Whitney wishes that her lover gets such a wife. She
then anticipates the question of the lover that having all qualities of Helen, Penelope, Lucrece
and Thisbe in one female is impossibility; and thus she answers that she has all the qualities
except Helen’s beauty.
After saying so, she at the same time adds that she does not have the prophetic quality
life Cassandra to foresee the future and prevent the misfortune that is to fall on her or her
lover but at the same time, she states that she prays to God to show her the right path and to
guide her in her decisions. Then, she wishes her lover all good things in life as she again uses
classical allusions to say that the lover should have–
 the long life of King Nestor,
 the wealth of King Xerxes, and
 the gold of King Crresus
 as well as “rest and quietness”

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In other words, she wishes the lover all things which a man can aspire to live a happy and
satisfying life.
Some scholars are of the opinion that Isabella Whitney’s poem is written following the
tradition of Ovid’s Heroides where an abandoned woman speaks to her lover about his
betrayal. The classical allusion (as discussed earlier) makes scholars feel that she is
consciously imitating Ovid. But at the same time, it is also being observed that Isabella
Whitney’s protagonist is not just an abandoned woman; she is much more than that as she not
only wishes well for her lover but also offers him advises to lead a happier life. In that sense,
Isabella Whitney seems to be much more a virtuous woman trying to guide his estranged
lover and at the same time through her advices provide some kind of corrective measures that
men can follow in the renaissance England so as to provide some significant space for female
consciousness. If Isabella Whitney wishes well and offers advices; yet at the same time she
also offers a critique which makes her one of the prominent female voice of the early modern
period, the Renaissance.
In Sir Thomas Wyatt’s poem “They flee from me” we have seen an inconstant beloved
who has changed her colour with the change of time and the poet complains that she flees
from the poet even though earlier she was physically intimate with him. The inconstancy of
the beloved is the theme of many literatures (both poetry and drama) of the Renaissance
times; but there is very few women’s writing which exists from the Renaissance period.
Therefore Isabella Whitney’s poem is a significant voice of the then times which manifests
the female voice.
Notes on the Greek Characters in the Poem:
Sinon: Greek secret agent who betrayed Troy in the Trojan War.
Aeneas: son of Priam who escaped the ruin of Troy and founded of Rome in Virgil's
Aeneid
Dido: queen of Carthage, seduced and then abandoned by Aeneus.
Theseus, who killed the Minotaur and took away King Minos’ daughter Ariadne, whom
he left behind at Naxos.
Jason: who got the Golden Fleece with the aid of Medea, whom he then left to marry
Glaucë (Creusa), later killed by Medea in revenge.
Greek Aeolus: god of the winds.
Neptune: Greek god of the oceans.
Paris: son of Priam, king of Troy, and seducer of Menelaus’ wife Helen, whom Paris
took away to Troy and to recover whom the Greeks successfully fought the Trojan war.
Troilus: son of Priam, who died faithful to the love of Greek Criseid, who betrayed his
love for Diomede. This is the subject of Chaucer's love epic, Troilus and Criseyde.

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 Penelope: wife of Odysseus who remained faithful to him through his wanderings in
Homer's Odyssey, despite the persistent suitors who laid siege to her for her wealth.
Lucres: Lucretia, a Roman lady who killed herself to protect her chastity.
Thisbie: beloved of Pyramus who committed suicide, believing him dead.
Peto: the Greenwich friar William Peto who opposed Henry VIII's divorce of Catherine
of Aragon.
Isabella: Isabella has no beauty, but she has the faithfulness and virtue of Lucres and
Thisbie.
Cassandra: daughter of Priam, king of Troy, and a clairvoyant who prophesied the fall
of Troy.
Nestor: a Greek king well-known for his great age and wisdom.
Xerxes: rich king of Persia, defeater of the Greeks at Thermopylae in 480 B.C.
Cressus: wealthy king of Lydia.

1.5 Status of Women during the Renaissance

During the Renaissance, the writers who gained prominence were all male writers and today
when we read about the Renaissance we usually tend to read the male writers like William
Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, John Webster, Francis Bacon, Thomas
Wyatt, Earl of Surrey, Edmund Spenser, Milton, John Donne and others, but almost no
female writers of the time are being read in most of the syllabi of the courses on the
Renaissance as very few writings by women writers exist to prove that they had made a
significant contribution to the literary landscape of the Elizabethan times. It is not that
women did not write during that time, but most of their writings were not preserved as they
were not thought to be good enough to be preserved for future generations.
One of the significant document of a Renaissance female writer that still exists is a
Pamphlet by a woman is by Jane Anger. It’s a pamphlet called Her Protection for Women,
which was in some ways a reaction against the Puritans writing against Women. One line of
the Pamphlet is worth mentioning, where Jane Anger writes “if our virtues decay daily, it’s
because men’s virtue decay hourly.” It shows the rage of Jane Anger which must have made
her react in such vehement manner against the men of those times.
In this context, it is necessary that one brings into discussion the pamphlets of Stephen
Gosson, who being a puritan not only wrote against the women but also against theatre.
According to Stephen Gosson, both theatre and Women are transgressive in nature. The
Elizabethan people thought that the women are by nature transgressive and therefore they
needed to be kept in patriarchal surveillance. Stephen Gosson is of the view that women are a
threat to the larger patriarchal economy because of their transgressive nature and therefore

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requires a highly structured process involving their passage from the house and surveillance
of the father to the house and surveillance of the husband.
Therefore Joan Kelly in the essay “Did Women have a Renaissance?” compares the
status of women in Renaissance with that of the so called Dark Age (Medieval Age) and
comments that there was “no renaissance for women,” as the situation worsened for the
“fairer sex.” And almost all the works of the Renaissance establish “chastity” as the female
norm and restructure the relation of the sexes to one of “female dependency” and “male
domination” as Catherine Belsey says in her Essay “Disrupting Sexual Difference” –
“Women, then as now, were defined in relation to men and in terms of their relations with
men.”
Thus the whole of the Renaissance Literature portrays women to be second rate creatures
and does not provide any space to her in the societal roles except from that of the “angel in
the household” or “the whore in the market place”. These two are the only roles for females
as if the women are obedient to the patriarchal culture then they are thought to be “the angel”
and if they question, critique or even show their dissatisfaction with the patriarchal whims
and wishes then they are termed as the ‘whore.’ In such a situation, women are generally seen
to be very “inconstant” and are always looking for ways in which they can break up the
patriarchal chains to assert their individual self and question the patriarchal dictates.
One can easily figure this out in Shakespeare’s play Othello, where Iago could trick
Othello to his own doom as he could make Othello believe that Desdemona is “inconstant.”
Othello believes in Iago much more than having faith in Desdemona. In an age when women
are seen and shown to be ‘unfaithful’ creatures, Isabella Whitney’s poem “I. W. To her
Unconstant Lover” is a grim reminder that it is not the women who are “inconstant” but the
males are.
The Critical Appreciation of the poem (in Section 3.4) must have given you a fair notion
of the ways in which Isabella Whitney has tried to represent her version of her lover’s
inconstancy. The poem can be read as a means by which the women’s voice differs from the
male voices of the age. It is true that men are always the privileged race in a patriarchal
society and therefore their creations, imaginations and representations are taken to be
absolute truth and are the dominant discourse of the times. In a male dominated society,
women are not allowed to speak; they are often silenced through different means (often by
repression or gender stereotyping or submission); and even if they have a voice which they
try to represent to the society they are mutilated / crushed with such vehemence that they are
often not heard. In such circumstances it becomes difficult for a woman not only to speak out,
but also to have a voice which goes against the patriarchal system.
In such a patriarchal society, if Isabella Whitney is able to have a voice of her own and
even be heard to some extent; it shows she that she must have had a much rebellious voice
which she modified and subdued to some extent to be accepted in her society. That she
somehow sugar coated her discourse on the inconstancy of men by offering advice to her

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estranged lover is necessary so that men of the Renaissance accept her writing. In that sense,
she may be termed as a very conscious, perceptive and wise female writer who knew the
sensibilities and consciousness of her age and wrote in a way which would serve her purpose
and yet at the same time be accepted by the society.
Isabella Whitney is usually not considered to be a feminist writer in the feminist
discourses, but one needs to remember that at a time when she is writing, she had to
deliberately make her writing so that she is accepted than just be feminist. So she wrote in a
way which is politically correct and not just politically just.
1.6 Summing Up
Isabella Whitney’s “I.W. To her Unconstant Lover” is a grim poetic expression of a female’s
unrequited love who has been jilted in love by her lover. Love finds its different
manifestations in the different genres of Renaissance literature, but Isabella Whitney in her
poem does something unusual as she presents her jilted love. For the Petrarchan sonneteers
who are so popular during the sixteen century, love is always unrequited as the Petrarchan
lover never dares to reach the beloved for he being in a position of lower status in the social
order. Whereas the Petrarchan lover’s love is unrequited as he never dares to reach the
beloved, Isabella Whitney’s love is unrequited because of the “inconstancy” of the lover.
Thus a grand difference of perceptions is being pointed out by the poet to show how the
women and men view and experience love in the sixteenth century.
1.7 Glossary
 Patriarchy– Patriarchy is a socio-cultural system in which males are primary authority
figures, and where fathers hold authority over women, children, and property. It implies
the institutions of male rule and privilege, and is dependent on female subordination.
 Feminism - Feminism can be defined as “a political position against patriarchy” and
feminist criticism as “a specific kind of political discourse: a critical and theoretical
practice committed to the struggle against patriarchy and sexism.” (Toril Moi) In other
words, it can be said that Feminist criticism is an interdisciplinary approach which
focuses on ‘gender politics’ though feminism rather than confining itself to textual
analysis has a broader perspective in terms of having the political aim of seeking a just
world for females and an end of all kinds of suppression and patriarchal oppression
against women.
 Renaissance: ‘Renaissance’ is an Italian word, meaning re-birth. Renaissance is
associated with major social and cultural developments in Europe between the 13th and
the 15th centuries. The contribution of the Renaissance to the emergence of modernity
in early modern Europe, and especially England, has been for many years an
appropriate entry point to the history of the modern world.
 Elizabethan Age: Elizabethan age is the age which coincides with the period of the
reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603). However the term Elizabethan age was used loosely

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 to refer to the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It was a time when the
English nation developed in all fields – commerce, maritime power, and nationalist
feeling and moreover in art and literature. It is the greatest age of drama with famous
playwrights like Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Webster and
others. The famous poets of the age are Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, John
Donne, and sometimes even Milton is also considered to be the epitome of Elizabethan
poetry. Francis Bacon and Walter Raleigh are also important scholars of Elizabethan
era.
1.8 Self-Check Questions
1. Write a Critical Appreciation of the poem “I. W. To her Unconstant Lover.”
2. Do you feel the woman’s voice of the Renaissance times is distinct from the other male
poets that you have already read? How is it different?
3. Identify the context and critically comment–
(a) I rather wish her HELENS face,
then one of HELENS trade:
With chastnes of PENELOPE
the which did never fade.
(b) But all in vayne for this I seeke,
wishes may not attaine it
Therefore may hap to me what shall,
and I cannot refraine it.
1.9 Recommended Readings
 Jordan, Constance. Renaissance Feminism: Literary Texts and Political Models. Ithaca:
Cornell UP, 1990.
 Martin, Radall. Women Writers in Renaissance England. London: Longman, 1997.
 Stevenson, Jane. Early Modern Women Poets. London: Oxford UP, 2001.
 Wall, Wendy. "Isabella Whitney and the Female Legacy". English language History. 58
(1991):35-62.

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 (d) John Donne
(i) The Sunne Rising; (ii) A Valediction; Forbidden Mourning
Vibhuti Wadhawan

1.1 Introduction

Life of John Donne (1572-1631)

John Donne was born in the latter half of Queen Elizabeth’s reign in 1572, in the period
commonly identified as the English Renaissance, and lived until the first decade of the
Caroline age. Donne’s poems were chiefly read in the manuscript form during his lifetime
and were published only after his death in 1631, and therefore, he is considered more of a
Jacobean poet. However, critic Jonson considers that Donne had already produced his best
work before he was twenty-five, but since his poems were published later, he is regarded as
the seventeenth century Jacobean poet.
The early seventeenth century was marked by political upheavals and religious unrest.
Donne was born of Roman Catholic parents but by the beginning of the seventeenth century
came under tremendous pressure to conform to the Anglican faith under the Protestant Queen
Elizabeth. In 1598, Donne entered the services of Sir Thomas Egerton, Lord Keeper of
England, as his secretary. However, what damaged his career was his secret marriage to Anne
More who was a minor under the guardianship of Egerton. As a result of his elopement,
Donne was dismissed from Egerton’s service and fell on bad times. For the next decade, he
lived in extreme poverty and unemployment while his family grew, with Anne giving birth to
a child each year. In order to improve his fortunes then, Donne took orders as a deacon and
priest in 1615 under pressure from King James. However, his wife Anne died soon after
while giving birth to a stillborn child. Distraught poet in bereavement turned fully to his
vocation as a man of religion. This was also the time his literary compositions saw a shift
from secular themes to religious concerns. He became the dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral and
held this position until his death in 1631.
1.2 Donne and the Poetic Love Tradition
At the time of Donne, there were mainly two ‘schools’ of love—the Platonic and the Ovidian.
Platonic love inspired from Petrarch was of a non-sensuous kind, where the beloved was seen
as a spiritual ideal—a manifestation of the higher divine. On the other hand, the Ovidian
school had a more sensuous and playful approach towards love where the lover became a
slave to his passions. While the Ovidian lover’s adoration was to win sensual rewards from
his ladylove, the Platonic lover was more devoted and deferential.
Let us not forget that Donne was writing for the Elizabethan court where courtly love
poetry enjoyed great patronage and favour with the queen. Courtly love ideal was revived by
Queen Elizabeth following the classical and medieval literary traditions of the courtly love

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poetry, where a nobleman pronounced his love for a lady and idealised her as chaste and
unattainable. The higher aim of courtly love ideal was to lead men to transcend the physical
beauty of the beloved to reach the ultimate beauty and truth of God. Through the pursuit of
such beauty, the lover would be exalted beyond the physical/temporal to a higher spiritual
plane. Most of the Elizabethan sonneteers such as Sidney and Spencer wrote in the courtly
love tradition and imitated Petrarch’s platonic model of courtly love, with their sonnets
venerating Queen Elizabeth as the “Virgin Queen”.
However, unlike his predecessors such as Spencer who described the visible physical
beauty, Petrarch who talked about sublimation in love, and Ovid for whom love was a sport,
Donne gives importance to physicality, earthiness and mutuality in love. While Petrarch and
Dante sanctified women’s body beyond such unholy contemplation, Donne rejects this old
platonic style which was devoid of passion and makes an unabashed declaration of his love.
Donne’s poems register a clear departure from the sonnet conventions of the Elizabethan
court as he moves away from the idealistic platonic approach of the courtly tradition to a
more sensual Ovidian expression. Donne can be credited for not only introducing innovation
in the Elizabethan renaissance poetry with his metaphysical conceits but also for challenging
the Petrarchan tradition where the beloved was seen as chaste and divine. With Donne, there
is no Petrarchan idealisation of women as goddesses. He rejects the platonic Petrarchan ideal
of womanhood and instead takes recourse to Ovidian elegies. He subverts the mystification of
the beloved commonly seen in Petrarch and expresses a longing for intimacy with the
beloved. In complete contrast to Petrarch, Donne celebrates reciprocity in male and female
love relationships and there is a continuous assertion of mutuality and reciprocity in the
experience of love. The ‘thou’ and ‘I’ that one sees in Petrarch becomes ‘we’ in Donne’s
poetry.
Broadly speaking, Donne’s poetry has been divided into two categories—love poetry and
religious poetry. Love is a recurrent theme in his poetry where he expresses a longing for
intimacy with the beloved and desires a union that cures “the defects of loneliness”(The
Extasie). While Donne’s love poems, songs and sonnets were composed in 1590s, the impact
of religion is seen towards the latter part of his life after he was ordained as an Anglican
priest under pressure from King James.
With the ascendancy of James I, the love poetry that flourished in the Elizabethan court
was gradually replaced by religious verses greatly patronised the king. The changed socio-
religious scene from Elizabethan to Jacobean age also cast its influence on Donne’s writings.
In contrast to the unabashed eroticism and promiscuity of his earlier poems, his later poems
reflect a mature understanding of love that took on a spiritual colouring. Grierson and Smith
identify this transition from sensual to religious poetry by Anne Donne’s death, and believe
that “when Anne died, all Donne’s love for her turned back to God from whom she
came”(97). His wife Anne’s death during childbirth and its bereavement turned him towards
God that paved way for religious poetry.

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 If Donne’s early poems are about love and its expression, his later poems are
metaphysical in content and reflect his spiritual awareness. However, the two experiences are
not shown exclusive and are often presented as one. Several of his holy sonnets and poems
conflate the sexual and the spiritual where the two experiences intertwine. Donne’s love
poems often use religious metaphors. In Batter my Heart, the poet uses rape as the central
metaphor. God is drawn as a masculine lover with poet a pliant female asking God to ravish
her to make her pure. The later poems reveal a shift in the poet’s religious sensibilities where
his initial scepticism about God in the Holy Sonnets converts to assured faith in Hymn to God
in my Sickness. It is in his poems where the religious unrest of his age along with his spiritual
scepticism and confusion accompanying his ordination also finds expression.
1.3 The Metaphysical Poets
The phrase ‘metaphysical poets’ was first used by Samuel Johnson in The Lives of Poets
(1799) who applied it to the work of poets writing at the beginning of the seventeenth century
whose “manner resembled that of Donne”. Most of the metaphysical poetry was written in
the latter part of the sixteenth century to mid-seventeenth century, prominently between 1595
and 1660.The metaphysical school included George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Abraham
Cowley among others.
Ostensibly, the word ‘metaphysical’ is a combination of ‘meta’ (after) and ‘physical’
(material) which means beyond or after the physical. Metaphysics is seen as opposite to the
physical/material nature of the world and deals with philosophical ideas related to religion,
death, nature of the soul, universe and man’s place in it. Critic R.G Cox suggests that the
term ‘metaphysical’ was used to identify poetry with “fundamental problems and opposition
of a metaphysical nature” that was “express(ed) by a special kind of paradoxical metaphors”
(Cox, 110). Much of the metaphysical poetry is religious and frequently other concerns
related to soul, eternity and time do appear.
A salient and distinguishing feature of metaphysical poetry is its use of conceits.
Conceits are witty and intellectualized metaphors that draw a deliberate parallel between two
dissimilar objects/ideas. The two objects may be vastly different and not alike at all, but the
ingenuity lies in bringing two disparate ideas and images together to draw an unlikely parallel
between the two.
Samuel Johnson identified Donne’s poetry as “metaphysical” for his rich use of
conceits. Donne’s poems use weird analogies, wit and wordplay to fuse logic and emotions
through abstract ratiocination and intellectual conceits. If in A Valediction, Donne presents
lovers as “twin-feet compass”, in The Flea he uses conceit of a flea to convince his beloved
for lovemaking.
Over the years, critics have differentiated conceits from ordinary poetic metaphors.
While metaphors imply straightforward comparison, a conceit likens two dissimilar objects.
Skilful use of a conceit establishes a relationship between two different ideas to convey the
poet’s vision by cleverly linking the ordinary and familiar with the abstract and imaginary.

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The strength of a poem lies in its creative use of metaphysical wit (clever reasoning) that
yokes unrelated ideas incapable of any link or association.
According to Grierson and Smith, “if Donne’s conceits are extravagant, his vocabulary is
simple” to reveal his cogent logic and his creative cleverness (99). There are frequent
references to religion, medieval cosmology, alchemy, chemistry and imperialism that well
illustrate the concerns of his age. Discourses on monarchy, law and science are alluded to and
often figure in the form of analogies and conceits.
1.4 The Sunne Rising
Donne’s The Sunne Rising is an imitation of the medieval European tradition of aubade –a
morning love song sung by the lover when the lovers separate at dawn. These twelfth century
aubade were essentially love poems in which the lover lamented the end of night’s comfort
with daybreak. The poem is also influenced by Ovid’s Amores that were playful and erotic
love elegies. Though Donne borrows from the two poetic traditions of Ovid and aubade, he
subverts them by reinventing the conventions.
The Sunne Rising is addressed to the sun. The poem has the poet speaking in voice of a
lover who reproaches the sun for disrupting the pleasures of the night with his beloved. The
conceit of the sun runs throughout the poem and the sun presented as a vain voyeur, a
peeping-tom who bothers the lovers through the curtains and windows and interferes in their
lovemaking.
Though it is the sun that determines the diurnal rhythm, it becomes an irksome nobody
for the lover as the lovers are subject to the motions of this sun like the rest of the world. The
lover upbraids the sun as “saucy”(impertinent) and “pedantic wretch”(haughty) and asserts
his superiority over the sun by calling it ”a busy old fool”(1). He condescendingly instructs
him to stop bothering them and instead wake up “late schoolboys”, apprentices to various
trades, court’s huntsmen preparing for king’s riding out and the “country ants” who go
harvesting. The image of the “country ants” here refers to both the real insect ‘ants’ and the
field labourers/farm hands engaged in agriculture. “Court huntsmen” here carries a veiled
reference to King James who was fond of hunting. Despite its importance, the impertinent orb
is dismissively dispatched to discharge his diurnal duties and not bother the lovers.
The sun is a symbol of life; a marker of time, hours and seasons and reins the activities
of the world. But the lover refuses to recognise the authority of the sun and flagrantly
debunks it by asserting that his love is eternal and not a slave of time or seasons: “Love, all
alike, no season knows, nor clime…”(9) Admonishing the sun, Donne asks him what makes
the sun think he can control the meeting of the lovers, and goes on to claim that their love is
not bound or enslaved by the movement of the sun. The sun holds no authority over the life
of lovers and is instead curtly asked to go about his daily business.
The sun is criticised throughout the poem. It is denigrated as “unruly” for intruding into
the lives of the lovers and is pulled down from its exalted pedestal. The poet-lover further

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claims that the sun “beams” are not so powerful and he can easily eclipse/block the sun by
merely shutting his eyes, something he would not do because he cannot bear to lose the sight
of his beloved even for a second. The sun is stripped of all its grandeur that in turn is
imparted to the beloved’s eyes which the lover says are more radiant than the sun.
Every insult thrown at the sun becomes a compliment to the beloved. It is by using the
conceit of the sun that the lover elevates his beloved above all the fragrance and the riches of
the world.
The sun is rendered peripheral with its glory imparted to the beloved upon whom the
lover claims sovereignty. The beloved is “all states” and the lover is the “prince” ruling over
her. And in his power over his beloved, he becomes a king/ruler of the most extensive state.
There is an allusion to the imperialistic enterprise of his day when Donne mentions East
Indies known for its perfumes and spices and West Indies famous for gold. The lover
commands the sun to “look” around the globe and report “tomorrow” all the richness and
treasures of India that he says are concentrated in the beloved who lies with him in bed,
proclaiming that compared to these riches, what he has in his bed pales the treasures of India.
All the honours, riches and alchemy of this world are meaningless before their love. “All
honor's mimique, all wealth alchemy”(24) refers to Plato’s conception of the material world
as temporary where all honour/fame is unreal and all wealth bogus. For the lover, the entire
world is illusive and only his love is real. It is the lovers that constitute the entire world and
all that is meaningful and worthy is concentrated in their love for each other.
In their status as lovers, the couple is exalted beyond the temporal. The world with all its
riches is concentrated in their bed as they look down on the sun and treat it with disdain. The
sun becomes a part of the material world that is unreal while the lovers present true reality—
timeless and eternal in their love for each other. Seasons, climate or time does not alter the
intensity of love in poet’s mind, as the poem reiterates lovers’ seclusion and exclusion from
the prying eyes of the hostile world and grants love permanence by elevating lovers beyond
the temporal world.
Paradoxically enough, the lover who was initially impatient at the appearance of the sun,
now orders the sun to stay forever in his room. The sun is “old” and should not take pains of
going around the world. And since the lovers constitute the whole world, the sun should
make the lovers his centre and revolve around them by making their bed its centre and walls
its orbit and shine on them. In the final lines, contempt gives way to patronage as the sun is
asked to shine on the lovers, with the couple taking the place of decentered earth: “shine here
on us, and thou art everywhere”(29).For the lover, it is the beloved who encapsulates all the
richness and grandeur. And since his beloved is the essence of all kingdoms, glory and
wealth, the sun should shine on them and not take pains to go around the world.
Though the heliocentric nature of the universe had long been discovered and known,
Donne still refers to the sun going around the earth and gives love the centrality he believes it
deserves/commands. For the lover, the sun may be a mighty symbol of life and a marker of

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time, but the lovers are above it in the boundlessness of their love that defies the limits of
both time and space. The lovers will keep their own time and the force of their love will make
the sun go round.
The Sunne Rising has Donne reiterating his belief in the sovereignty of love over every
other human and natural activity. It is male heterosexual love that finds expression in verses
where a man praises his beloved. However, the power that the lover wishes over the beloved
needs a closer inspection. Catherine Belsey questions this kind of love expressed in terms of
“conquest” with a “wholly silent women” and goes on to identify “sexual politics with the
cultural analysis of femininity and masculinity”(219).She contends that Donne’s poems
reveal an inherent gender hierarchy through the construction of this ‘self’ and the ‘other’,
where the ‘self’ is the superior male/coloniser/ruler/powerful and the ‘other’ is the inferior
woman/colonised subject/ruled/weak. Women are objectified and become the subordinated
‘other’ –a kind of possession to be gazed at, desired and conquered.
Though many of Donne’s love poems are addressed to women, the women in them
remain silent and subordinate to the male voice. His other poems Elegie: to his Mistress
Going to Bed and The Good-morrow also present sexual relation in terms of imperial politics
where the beloved’s body becomes a territorial possession to be mapped and discovered.
According to Thomas Docherty “what is being sought by the poet is a recognition of his
maleness, recognition of his phallus, and an acknowledgement of the power which its
potency is supposed to give him” (82). Implicit gender hierarchy is revealed through the
metaphor of colonization, where the lover becomes a ‘prince’ ruling over his ‘states’. With
the lover rightfully declaring mastery over his beloved, the poet seems to make it clear that
the rule of the female monarch does not mean patriarchal society is rethinking gender roles,
and reaffirms the old hierarchy where men are superior and women play a subordinate role.
The tone of The Sunne Rising is both commanding and patronising and the language,
colloquial. Metaphors ranging from science to colonial explorations are employed to assert
dominion over the beloved. Each of the three stanzas is ten lines long and follow the rhyme
pattern of ABBACDCDEE. The poem addresses the sun by way of ‘apostrophe’— a figure of
speech which directly addresses an object, in this case it is the sun by which the poet replaces
Galileo’s heliocentric concept of the universe with the geocentric theory where the sun goes
around the earth.
1.5 A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
Like most of Donne’s poems, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning was published
posthumously in 1633.It was originally penned in 1611 on the occasion of Donne parting
from his wife Anne More Donne when he was going to France leaving his wife behind.
Literally meaning goodbye, a ‘valediction’ is a farewell speech in which the poet-lover
forbids his wife not to mourn their parting and instead take strength from their physical
separation. Written in a set one nine quatrains, the poem mostly follows iambic tetrameter
and has ABAB as its rhyme scheme.

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 The poem opens with the image of “virtuous men” who pass away quietly. They go
almost unnoticeably, with their passing almost imperceptible to those around who are left
wondering whether or not it has happened yet. Albeit it is a love poem, it begins with a
metaphor of virtuous men who leave almost unnoticeably. It was believed that a peaceful
death was a result of having lived a virtuous life and the death of such men was thought to
have a quiet dignity about it. Donne uses this analogy to say that even if their parting feels
like death, they must not lament and accept it with quiet courage.
Emphasising the spiritual and sacred dimension of their love, Donne contrasts it with the
ordinary love of “the laity”. He explains that a more earthly love is dependent on physical
proximity and emotive displays and declarations of love, whereas, their spiritual love is
silently strong and should not be given to “sigh-tempests” and “tear-floods”(6). In the
dignified manner of their love, the lovers should part silently and not grieve openly as
mourning \loudly at parting would be a “profanation of our joys” that would belittle their
love(7). What he means is that their ennobled love should not be subject to outer displays of
emotions.
Throughout the poem Donne takes recourse to various conceits and analogies to contrast
the two kinds of love. Earthly natural disasters are contrasted with the noiseless, grander
motions of the orbs in heaven .Donne here makes a contrast to point out that while the
disturbances on earth are more noticeable and cause “harms and fears”, by comparison, the
significant movement of the planets in the larger cosmos goes unnoticed. For him, their love
is grand like “the spheres” whose motions make no noise. Their love is not the love of “dull
sublunary lovers” who “cannot admit absence” of the beloved (14). Sub-lunary or below
(sub) the moon (lunar) refers to earth as a sublunary sphere—an inferior place when put
against the larger spheres beyond. “Sub-lunary lovers” allude to those mundane, earthly
lovers who require physical proximity in love. Just as the moving of earth is contrasted with
the “trepidation of the spheres”(11), the poem contrasts “ sublunary ” love of the “laity” with
their refined love. These extended comparisons may seem far-stretched but these unusual
conceits connect well with the theme of the poem to compare the two types of love.
As lovers then, they must be “inter-assured of the mind” (19), confident and secure in
each other and quietly assured of their love. Being more refined and sacred in character, their
love does not warrant any outer displays of emotions nor it is dependent on physical
proximity, for their “two souls…are one” (21). Even their parting is not a “breach”, rather, it
will expand their love like highly malleable gold to disregard separation. Donne here refers to
alchemy or the speculative science of transforming base metals into gold popular in the
seventeenth century. Donne uses the metaphor of alchemy to stress the purity of their love,
which he believes is precious and pure as gold. Just as pure gold is highly malleable and can
be beaten into a fine foil, their love too can be stretched to overcome the pangs of separation.
This is Donne’s clever use of conceit to liken his love to refined gold that stretches.
In the last three stanzas, the poet employs the analogy of a compass to say they are
forever linked to each other like the twin feet of a compass. One leg of the compass travels

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but always remains connected to the other even when the two are apart. In their relationship,
his beloved is like the “fixed” foot of the compass that stays steady and stable while the other
foot traces the circle. In spiritual geometry, the idea of circle presents wholeness and
perfection, with the poet suggesting that the lovers may be two separate beings but their souls
are one. Together, the oneness of lovers creates a circle that symbolises eternity and
harmony. Lovers are the “stiff-twin compasses” that always follow each other, and for true
lovers like them mourning is inappropriate when their souls are always connected. Their
souls and minds are united and physical separation cannot ‘breach’ this bond.
What Donne emphasises throughout the poem is that a more ordinary love depends on
sensual and physical connection that cannot tolerate separation. On the other hand, their bond
is more spiritual and special and can endure separation since it is love in its purest form.
Genuine love has a spiritual bond that transcends distance and is timeless and eternal.
A recurrent preoccupation of Donne’s poetry is the need to define love. However, In A
Valediction, the sensuality of earlier poems gives way to devotion in love that is both
spiritual and mature. It defines the alchemical nature of love that for him intertwined
sensuality and spirituality. Though the poem was composed preceding his wife’s death and
before his ordination, we find that in his later poems, this love expressed for the beloved is
directed towards God.
Donne’s use of conceit is also noteworthy. In A Valediction, the conceits involve dying
men, orbs and luminaries, earthquakes, gold and even mathematical compasses to emphasise
the enduring quality of his love. It is through the use of conceits that Donne yokes together
heterogeneous ideas to comment on the complementary dualities of emotion and reason/man
and woman/body and soul/ real and ideal/sexual and divine love/finite and infinite/self and
other. These dualities are complementary and define the totality of human experience.
Glossary:
Courtly love—a literary genre of love poetry in the middle ages where a courtier expressed
his love for a noblewoman through poetry. This kind of love ideal was practiced by noble
lords and ladies; its proper milieu being the royal palace or court.
Conceit—an ingenious or fanciful comparison or metaphor.
Ratiocination— the process of logical reasoning.
Sublunary—sub (below) and lunary (of the moon). People who meet under the moon i.e. on
earth.
Laity— lay people, ordinary people.
Trepidation—shaking and quivering.
Inter-assured—mutual, reciprocal.
Alchemy—the science of alchemy concerns with discovering methods to convert base metal
into gold.

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Let us Sum up:
 Metaphysical poetry is a highly intellectualized poetry marked by its use of
paradoxes, ingenious conceits and incongruous imagery that conveys a certain
complexity of thought.
 A common feature of the metaphysical poetry is its use of conceit(s). A conceit is a
complex metaphor that compares two dissimilar objects/ideas.
 Conceits combine wit/reasoning/logic and feelings to describe a poet’s emotional
experience.
 Metaphysical poetry covers a wide range of topics from love to religious
consciousness and establishes a relation between them to throw light on the nature of
love and reality in a philosophical way.
 Donne’s The Sunne Rising is an aubade to the beloved—a celebration of the couple’s
love through the metaphysical conceit carried through the sun that claims the
superiority of love over every human activity.
 A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning is a farewell poem where the idealised love is
described as a deep spiritual experience that is not flaunted and can bear separation.
 Donne’s poetry reflects the spirit of the age with its wide range of conceits drawn
from scientific discoveries to geographical explorations.
Questions:
Q1 What are the main features of metaphysical poetry?
Q2. Explain how conceits are different from ordinary metaphors. Explain Donne’s use of
conceit by giving examples from the poems in your course.
Q3. What are the main themes of metaphysical poetry by John Donne?
Q4. In The Sunne Rising, how does the speaker use the conceit of the sun. How does his
attitude towards the sun change by the end of the poem?
Q5. Explain the metaphysical aspects in A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.
Q6. What are the arguments Donne makes in A Valediction to convince his wife that she
should not mourn their parting?
Works Cited:
 Belsey, Catherine. “Worlds of Desire in Donne’s Lyric Poetry”. Sidney, Spencer and
Donne: A Critical Introduction ed. Rina Ramdev. Delhi: 2002
 Docherty, Thomas. John Donne, Undone. London: Methuen, 1986. p 82
 Grierson and Smith. A Critical History of English Poetry.Bloomsbury.2014

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 Johnson, Ben. “Conversations on Donne”. John Donne’s Poetry. ed. Arthur Clements.
1833
 Johnson, Samuel. “Lives of the Poets”. John Donne: The Critical Heritage ed. AJ
Smith. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975.p 218.
 R. G. Cox, “The Poems of John Donne” in From Donne to Marvell, ed. Boris Ford,
Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1982. p. 110.
—“A Survey of Literature from Donne to Marvell”

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